Media Coverage

Sydney Morning Herald September 10 2008
"Rees's red-hot razor" by Alexandra Smith, Julie Robotham and Brian Robins quoted Associate Professor Elizabeth Savage on front page

"Rich pickings from Medicare Safety Net" by John Breusch quoted Kees van Gool

"Insurers should pay those fighting fat" by Natasha Wallace quoted Professor Jane Hall

"Insurers urged to reward fitness push" by Natasha Wallace quoted Professor Jane Hall

Jane Hall was interviewed by Eleanor Hall about hospital funding

Report on CHERE research into the cost-effectiveness of newborn screening for the rare metabolic disorder, medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (MCADD)

 “Safety net not saving money” by Sue Dunlevy quoted CHERE research

Report on CHERE research into carers providing home-based palliative care

Financing Australian health care

Does productivity increase with remuneration?

Offering the right incentives

Untangling hospital medicine funding

Methadone for prisoners 'saves money'

Adam Cresswell (Copyright News Limited - used with permission - www.newstext.com.au)

17apr06

METHADONE programs in the nation's jails save taxpayers much more money than they cost and should be dramatically expanded in every state, experts say.

A study by drug researchers found that giving strictly controlled doses of methadone to inmates addicted to heroin not only cut reoffending rates but also cost a fraction of the expense of locking up prisoners for a year.

According to the analysis, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and said to be the world's first cost-efficiency study of a prison methadone program, treating one inmate with methadone for one year costs $3234.

As the cost of locking up an inmate is about $176 for just one day - or about $64,000 a year - methadone programs in jail pay their costs for a whole year if they cut a prisoner's subsequent jail time by just 20 days.

The study was conducted by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation.

Co-author Kate Dolan said a previous NDARC study had found that if inmates were in methadone treatment for at least eight months, the proportion sent back to jail within a year of release was 23 per cent. The proportion was 97 per cent among prisoners who had not been given access to methadone while in jail.

Most states already have methadone programs in jails, but some are extremely restricted. Ms Dolan said none were big enough to meet demand and called for their urgent expansion. Of the 8000 inmates in NSW, about 4000 had a heroin problem at the time of sentencing, she said. Of those in jail, 2000 inmates injected heroin, but just 1000 were on a methadone program.

Ms Dolan called for the NSW jail methadone program to be expanded from 1000 inmates to at least 1500.

"Ideally, (methadone programs) should be available for everyone who needs them, but I'm being realistic - I know how hard it is (to increase them)," she said. "If we could get to 2000 ... that would be fantastic."

A spokesman for NSW Health Minister John Hatzistergos said there was "nothing to suggest there is significant unmet need" for methadone programs in the state's jails.

Statistics compiled in 2004 by the Australian National Council on Drugs, the Prime Minister's official advisory body on drug policy, showed some other states, particularly Queensland, had far lower rates of methadone treatment in jails than NSW. Just 45 prisoners out of a total Queensland jail population of 4721 had methadone treatment in 2003-04 - less than one per cent.

ANCD executive officer Gino Vumbaca backed the NDARC call for methadone programs to be expanded, but said other therapies, such as counselling and drug-free rehabilitation, should be made available.

"We would assume there's more than 1 per cent of Queensland's prisoners who have a drug problem," he said.

"If you are going to spend $60,000 a year to put someone in jail, you might as well spend a couple of extra grand to treat their drug problem."

By Tara Ravens AAP reprinted with permission from news.com.au network

March 11, 2006

ALMOST 40 per cent of Medicare Safety Net funds are going to private obstetric services and IVF rather than people who suffer from chronic illness, new research shows.

Since its introduction in 2004, 90 per cent of the $440 million spent on the safety net has gone to specialist services, leaving just 10 per cent for GPs or bulk billing, according to figures from the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE).

CHERE senior research officer Kees van Gool said the safety net spending was missing its target.

"When the Government announced it (the safety net) as a fairly fundamental change, it was going to provide insurance targeting people with chronic illness, but there is no evidence that this is happening," Mr van Gool said today.

"Wealthier electorates are getting more, also electorates with a better health status are getting more.

"What we suspect is happening is that the Medicare services with high out-of-pocket costs are being utilised by wealthier, healthier people."

For example, Mr van Gool said reproductive services and IVF had accounted for 38 per cent of safety net funds.

That means every IVF visit is being subsidised to the tune of $250 while a GP consultation only warrants 26 cents.

The research contradicts comments by Health Minister Tony Abbott that the system does not discriminate against the neediest Australians.

"Obviously areas with high GP bulk billing rates have lower safety net expenditure," Mr van Gool said.

"It's clear from our analysis that higher income electorates receive the most benefit from the safety net and the funding does not appear to be distributed in the way it was intended."

The research also found the Medicare Safety Net did not benefit all elderly people.

Expenditure was high for the 75 to 84 year old age group but not for those 85 years and above, the study found.

The CHERE research is based on analysis of five months of Medicare Safety Net expenditure data from July 2004.

But Mr van Gool said preliminary analysis of the 2005 data released by Mr Abbott yesterday indicate the findings from the 2004 data are sound.

He called on the Federal Government to re-examine the universality of safety net eligibility.

Medicare Safety Net Funding Missing the Target was also reported online in The Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Herald Sun, The Courier Mail, The Adelaide Advertiser, The Northern Territory News, as well as Channel 7 and Channel 9 news sites.

Kees van Gool was also interviewed by 2UE and the report was the lead story in the 5pm news bulletin on Saturday March 11th.