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  • PM stakes his reputation on big-bang health reform

     

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    It’s also a process-driven solution that depends on solving currently intractable problems such as doctor shortages by managerial incentives and isn’t what the public thought Rudd had promised in 2007 when he said he’d take over public health.

    Like the emissions trading scheme to address climate change, this proposal has the potential to offer great hope that can nevertheless sink when people begin questioning how it could directly and positively affect their wellbeing.

    It also carries with it the threat of a referendum on federal powers over health, to be held at the same time as the election.

    A referendum battle is distracting and draining for a government and doomed to fail if it does not have bipartisan support and the backing of the states.

    There is also the issue of priorities for the next election, with health overtaking climate change, which Labor has suggested could form the basis of a double-dissolution election and an effective “referendum” on the “greatest economic and moral challenge of our time”.

    Hospital reform is something that has been necessary for ages and strikes a deeply responsive nerve with the public. It is also something the Prime Minister put at the middle of Labor’s last election pitch in 2007.

    Voters took him at his word last time and he’s asking them to do so again at his peril.

    137 comments on this story

  • Crop scientists discover fungi alternative to pesticides

    Crop scientists discover fungi alternative to pesticides

    Ecologist

    3rd March, 2010

    Study identifies naturally occurring alternatives for controlling wireworm, a widespread potato pest in the UK

    Farmers may soon have a non-chemical pesticide for controlling the damaging potato pest, wireworm, after scientists at Swansea University identified a fungal alternative.

    The wireworm, the larvae of click beetles which damages potatoes and other arable crops, drastically reduce yields and is usually controlled by applying insecticides to the soil.

    But a Swansea University team at the School of Environment and Society led by Dr Minshad Ali Ansari and Professor Tariq Butt, found one fungi in particular, the metarhizium anisopliae strain V1002, that had a 90 per cent success rate in killing the wireworms during testing.

    Dr Ansari said this fungi offered the possibility of a ‘completely organic approach to controlling pests’.

    Herbicide resistance

    The research on non-chemical alternatives comes as Kansas State University scientists confirmed weed resistance was growing to a key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

    Weed scientist Phil Stahlman, who has studied the spreading resistance in western Kansas, said it might ‘increase control costs for growers’. He recommended other herbicides that could be used to control the Kochia weed, also known as fireweed.

    The weed is also commonly found in the western United States and Canada.

    According to reports, Monsanto declined to answer questions about how significant the resistance problems are and if they are expected to spread further.

    EU approves GM potato

    Also, this week, the European Commission authorised BASF’s genetically modified potato, ‘Amflora’, for cultivation in the EU. The potato is the first crop to be approved for planting in Europe since Monsanto’s MON810 GM maize in 1998.

    BASF said the Amflora crop is designed to yield industrial starch and will not enter the food chain.

    Useful links
    Kansas State University research
    Swansea university

  • The death knell for small hospitals

     

    Senior NSW Government sources said as many as 100 regional and rural hospitals could become unviable.

    Today’s poll

    Do you think Kevin Rudd’s health reform will work?

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    Under what Mr Rudd described as the biggest change to Australian healthcare since Medicare, the Federal Government will become the major funder of hospital services, which will be run by local managers.

    The Commonwealth will take $90 billion over five years – $50 billion over the first three – in GST revenue from the states to fund a new National Health and Hospital network.

    Sue Dunlevy’s blog – hospital heads in the gun

    Malcolm Farr’s blog – Rudd goes for the doctor and the voter

    Mr Rudd will no longer provide states with money to run their hospitals, instead he will directly fund the local hospital networks, boosting the Commonwealth’s share from 35 per cent to 60 per cent.

    The new funding system will remove the current caps placed on hospital budgets. A price will be set for each service, with the Federal Government paying 60 per cent of that.

    This price will cover the “efficient” cost of hospital services and states such as NSW, which provide inefficient services, will have to subsidise those extra costs from state budgets.

    “The Australian Government’s decision to take on the dominant funding role for the entire public hospital system is designed to end the blame game, to eliminate waste and to shoulder the funding burden of the rapidly rising health costs of the future,” Mr Rudd said yesterday.

    Senior NSW Government sources said the plan would not put any more money into the health system.

    They said the 100 hospitals across regional and rural NSW would be financially unviable under the casemix system, which allocated funding on a per-procedure basis, because the volume of medical procedures in small hospitals was too low.

    “The State Government will have to make a decision as to whether it can continue to subsidise these hospitals or close them,” they said.

    Greater Western Area Health Service health advisory chair Dr Steve Fleckhoe fears for the future of 44 hospitals in his western NSW region.

    “I am absolutely sure that the small hospitals . . . could not possibly fit into a casemixed model,” he said. “It worries the heck out of me. The worry was always that an efficiency model would be applied that didn’t take into account other circumstances.”

    Mr Rudd’s office said the reforms would not force any hospitals to close.

    His office guaranteed that medical services to regional hospitals in NSW would be retained and assessed by the proposed new independent umpire.

    “There will be loadings to recognise the needs of people in regional Australia,” a spokesman said.

    Mr Rudd will also move to take over from the states’ primary care services, such as community health centres, mother and baby clinics, drug and alcohol services and community based mental health services.

    The changes will start to be introduced in 2011 but voters will have to re-elect Mr Rudd twice before the new system takes full effect in 2013-14.

    “There is a lot in these proposals that has the potential to significantly improve our hospital services,” said Australian Medical Association president Andrew Pesce, but he said NSW hospitals might lose if the payment-per-service system did not take into account care and training costs.

    In developments today:

    KEVIN Rudd has kicked off a media blitz to sell his proposed shake-up.

    Mr Rudd said that under the proposed new national standards, maximum waiting times would be in place for elective and emergency surgery.

    “What we need through new tough national standards is for patients to have confidence that there will be maximum waiting times, that there will be absolute maximum waiting times for elective surgery and for treatments of accident emergency,” Mr Rudd told the Nine Network.

    “We are bringing in local hospital networks to ensure that locals can run their hospital systems for the future,” Mr Rudd said.

    “So if you are a patient you know that your local health professionals are in the driving seat.”

    DEPUTY prime Minister Julia Gillard said the reforms had been discussed in detail with the states.

    “Of course there have been discussions with the states,” Ms Gillard told Macquarie Radio.

    “The prime minister’s message to premiers and chief ministers is very clear: if we continue the way we’re going now, health costs are going to consume all of state budgets in around 20 years’ time.”

    30 comments on this story

     

  • Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters

     

    Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.

    At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth’s crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.

    “Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too,” said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL).

    “Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,” added McGuire, who is one of the organisers of UCL’s Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards conference, which will open on 15 September. Some of the key evidence to be presented at the conference will come from studies of past volcanic activity. These indicate that when ice sheets disappear the number of eruptions increases, said Professor David Pyle, of Oxford University’s earth sciences department.

    “The last ice age came to an end between 12,000 to 15,000 years ago and the ice sheets that once covered central Europe shrank dramatically,” added Pyle. “The impact on the continent’s geology can by measured by the jump in volcanic activity that occurred at this time.”

    In the Eiffel region of western Germany a huge eruption created a vast caldera, or basin-shaped crater, 12,900 years ago, for example. This has since flooded to form the Laacher See, near Koblenz. Scientists are now studying volcanic regions in Chile and Alaska – where glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking rapidly as the planet heats up – in an effort to anticipate the eruptions that might be set off.

    Last week scientists from Northern Arizona University reported in the journal Science that temperatures in the Arctic were now higher than at any time in the past 2,000 years. Ice sheets are disappearing at a dramatic rate – and these could have other, unexpected impacts on the planet’s geology.

    According to Professor Mark Maslin of UCL, one is likely to be the release of the planet’s methane hydrate deposits. These ice-like deposits are found on the seabed and in the permafrost regions of Siberia and the far north.

    “These permafrost deposits are now melting and releasing their methane,” said Maslin. “You can see the methane bubbling out of lakes in Siberia. And that is a concern, for the impact of methane in the atmosphere is considerable. It is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.”

    A build-up of permafrost methane in the atmosphere would produce a further jump in global warming and accelerate the process of climate change. Even more worrying, however, is the impact of rising sea temperatures on the far greater reserves of methane hydrates that are found on the sea floor.

    It was not just the warming of the sea that was the problem, added Maslin. As the ice around Greenland and Antarctica melted, sediments would pour off land masses and cliffs would crumble, triggering underwater landslides that would break open more hydrate reserves on the sea-bed. Again there would be a jump in global warming. “These are key issues that we will have to investigate over the next few years,” he said.

    There is also a danger of earthquakes, triggered by disintegrating glaciers, causing tsunamis off Chile, New Zealand and Newfoundland in Canada, Nasa scientist Tony Song will tell the conference. The last on this list could even send a tsunami across the Atlantic, one that might reach British shores.

    The conference will also hear from other experts of the risk posed by melting ice in mountain regions, which would pose significant dangers to local people and tourists. The Alps, in particular, face a worryingly uncertain future, said Jasper Knight of Exeter University. “Rock walls resting against glaciers will become unstable as the ice disappears and so set off avalanches. In addition, increasing meltwaters will trigger more floods and mud flows.”

    For the Alps this is a serious problem. Tourism is growing there, while the region’s population is rising. Managing and protecting these people was now an issue that needed to be addressed as a matter of urgency, Knight said.

    “Global warming is not just a matter of warmer weather, more floods or stronger hurricanes. It is a wake-up call to Terra Firma,” McGuire said.

  • Batten down the hatches, a political storm is brewing

    Batten down the hatches, a political storm is brewing

    Climate change in Australia — of the political variety — is real and happening now. As a fresh opinion poll rolls in every few days, the underlying trend is moving inexorably against Labor. Here’s a sampling over the past week:

    Federal: Newspoll, published today, shows little change in party polling (government ahead on two-party-preferred terms 52-48), but Tony Abbott’s satisfaction rating jumped four points to 48. Yesterday’s Essential Research has Labor’s lead at a new low of 53-47, down from 54-46 last week and 55-45 a week before.

    Victoria: Nine months out from a state election, yesterday’s Morgan Poll puts Liberal and National support at 50.5, leading the ALP (49.5) for the first time on a two-party preferred basis. And although John Brumby (50.5) is clearly preferred as the “better Premier ” ahead of Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu (30.5), 47% disapprove of Brumby’s handling of the job compared to only 37% who approve.

    South Australia: A Sunday Mail poll over the weekend showed a swing of around 10 per cent against Labor in the key marginal seat of Morialta, weeks out from a state election.

    Tasmania: Last Wednesday’s EMRS poll had Labor are down two points since November to 31, the Liberals down five to 39 and the Greens are up six to 27 — which would give the Greens the balance of power in this month’s state election.

    Even allowing for local factors, margins of error, temporary issues and blips, you’d be hard pressed not to conclude that the punters are uneasy and the mood is running against the incumbents everywhere.

    Batten down the hatches.

  • Rudd’s hospital reform more radical than 1984 Medicare revamp

     

    The Rudd government is seeking to reduce not increase use of public hospitals, thus easing the strain, by putting in place a more efficient, integrated arrangement which, it is hoped, will spur people to be treated by less expensive primary health, (ie outside hospital) services.

    He is hoping to assuage the hostility of some states, particularly Victoria, to change by promising dollops more money for both hospital and primary care.

    Rudd is promising to double the Commonwealth’s contribution to efficient hospital services by promising to pay 60 per cent of the efficient running cost – up from the 40 per cent level recommended by his own National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission.

    Canberra would also pay 100 per cent of the efficient price of primary health care services as part of a package he says will “permanently reverse” the decline in Commonwealth funding of public hospitals.

    The federal government will also directly fund “local hospital networks” (sounding familiar to the current Victorian arrangements) to “break down the barriers” in the system and deliver better integrated care.

    These go much further than was expected.

    The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, which delivered its report to the Government nine months ago, called for a shift towards a “one health system” to end the blame and cost-shifting inherent today.

    The commission urged the federal government to take over 100 per cent of the efficient cost of hospital outpatient services and pay 40 per cent of the efficient cost of every public patient admission to a public hospital, with that percentage figure to be increased incrementally to 100 per cent.