So Who Runs the Health Service?

Well here in Coffs Harbour we have Dr Theresa Beswick. The Coffs Clinical Network Coordinator has overall responsibility for the coordination and strategic management of all public health services of the Network from Red Rock in the north, Dorrigo to the west and Scotts Head to the south. This includes all community based services as well as the hospitals at Coffs Harbour, Macksville, Bellingen and Dorrigo. The Network Coordinator is also the General Manager of the Coffs Harbour Health Campus. But It’s not her. 

Then there’s Stewart Dowrick. For more than 25 years, Stewart Dowrick has advocated for and worked towards greater access to quality health care for communities. Appointed the Chief Executive of the Mid North Coast Local Health District in January 2011, Mr Dowrick works with the region’s clinicians and the community to provide health care through strategic and quality management. But it’s not him. 

David Weiss, he’s the First Assistant Secretary, Medical Benefits Division. He might have some control over billing, apparently not. And from my experience not much interest in it either. 

Not all is lost, there’s always the Minister for Health the Hon Greg Hunt MP, surely he has some control over his own portfolio? 

Guess again. No, after four months of excruciating pain, deteriorating health, mounting personal costs, five operations in three years, and looking straight down the barrel of two more, I have reached the inevitable conclusion that our Health Service is in fact controlled by the AMA. 

 The Australian Medical Association have got the game by the balls, as they say. If a mechanic services your car, and fails to do so correctly, it’s covered by warranty, your rights as a consumer are enshrined by law. Mechanics should join the AMA, then they could charge you for correcting their own mistakes, what a lurk! Medicare keeps paying them, irrespective of incompetence, negligence, or over servicing, they’re invincible. 

Is it not time that the medical industry operate under the same laws as the rest of us. Is it not time for the medical profession be held accountable?