Thread: Quality of medical practitioners?

Originally Posted by ramblingboy42

I pay nothing, my doc bulk bills and arranges any extras for me with other special care providers who generally do the same.

same with me

Originally Posted by ramblingboy42

I pay nothing, my doc bulk bills and arranges any extras for me with other special care providers who generally do the same.

No mate, the government pay for you and you help the government with your taxes

Originally Posted by ramblingboy42

I pay nothing, my doc bulk bills and arranges any extras for me with other special care providers who generally do the same.

I am thinking that Pedro was implying that all tax-payers pay via the Medicare levy every year.

Obviously those with minimal taxable income pay little or none.


I think one of the biggest issues is the entry requirements to get into Medicine at Uni.

I know a doctor personally, and his son scored an almost perfect score on his HSC. Passed all the prerequisites for entering medical school, but he stumbled during the interview. This cost him a position. How can this be fair?

When a 18 or 19 yo kid is preparing to spend the best part of the next 10 years of his life learning, why should the yay or nay come down to 1 simple interview?

When my wife ran the medical centre, we got to know most of the doctors there very well. The vast majority of them, (18 doctors in this centre) were wonderful people, and brilliant at their jobs. They came from all different backgrounds, but I can tell you, not a single one was born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

During a power outage, the black doctors (Nigerian) were the first to say they couldn't continue seeing patients, and no-one could see them in the dark. THAT cracked me up.

Sadly thou, the quality of doctors has diminished, as a number of them from overseas just want to get their qualifications, and then head home again, where they will make better money.


Australia's health-care system is not perfect, but it is a damn sight better than a lot of other countries.

Originally Posted by ramblingboy42

I pay nothing, my doc bulk bills and arranges any extras for me with other special care providers who generally do the same.

I pay a large chunk of income tax, then another bucket load of GST with 5 kids, along with all the hidden taxes like fuel etc. Now if they gave me back all my tax I would happily pay the full doctors Bill or a higher level of health fund than I'm in now. In several cases I have paid the almost full specialists bill when the option was 3-6 months wait public or go private and only get a small portion back from Medicare / health fund. In others it was bulk billed by numerous specialists and therapists. Either way I paid directly or indirectly.

Originally Posted by Basil135

I think one of the biggest issues is the entry requirements to get into Medicine at Uni.

I know a doctor personally, and his son scored an almost perfect score on his HSC. Passed all the prerequisites for entering medical school, but he stumbled during the interview. This cost him a position. How can this be fair?

When a 18 or 19 yo kid is preparing to spend the best part of the next 10 years of his life learning, why should the yay or nay


.

In New Zealand in the early 1980s when I did medical intermediate year there were interviews but there was a" known" background to those interviews as well. In those days it could much more depend on whether your father was a doctor, you were an excellent rugby player who could help the university continue its winning run, these two helped you get in more easily even with lower grades (B average) also there as a ethnic quota as well if you were of Maori descent as well.
The rest of us poor peasants needed A average and a good( lucky) interview and one of the first questions was what high school you went to which was code for if not a private school of a certain class you stood little chance first time around.
Now it has changed for the better,up to 30% is based on your background and personality(suitably to relate to people etc) they now suggest to sit the compulsory psychological profile test ( about 3 hours) before you go medical school or even sit the medical intermediate year exams as well to test your reactions under stress among other things as you can learn but need to be able to apply that knowledge under stress otherwise all that learning is useless in real life so its definitely improving, the ethnic quota let some people who were really great doctors get into the medical school who would have missed out judging by their grades but who are excellent empathetic doctors especially in general practice but also some who were not capable of passing but demanded extra exams and re sitting of exams because they had failed as well and were never going to pass anyway. All sorts of people in medicine and there is a lot of stress as well and indeed doctors and dentists do have a higher suicide rate than the average population as well. a fair percentage drop out along the way as well.
The medical profession represents a cross section of society with all its flaws as do say the police or similar groups.
Remember they might have already done 85 hours that week especially in A&E and cannot be on top of their game all the time......

The Medicare levy is a tax of around 1.5% on your taxable income.
Those who pay little or no tax - that is generally old age pensioners, unemployed, disabled etc - don't pay or pay little in the way of medicare levy, and are rightly looked after by the rest of us. That's fair.
However, if you are well off and have a creative accountant, you also pay little tax and little in the way of medicare levy, despite being able to pay your way in health care. The really well off are usually the ones with a need for creative accountants. Middle class average Aussies can't play this game, and just ante up their tax every year. That's not fair.
The crunch however is that all the medicare levy collected off taxpayers only pays for about 1/7th of the health costs in this country. The remainder comes from general taxation. So the reality is that health care sucks up 10% and increasing of the tax/levy dollars.
We have an ageing population, which will mean more and more retirees and aged folk using the system because they are the ones who also have the disease burden that costs so much to treat.
Thus fewer of us workers paying increasing tax and medicare levy looking after a growing dependent population.
Medicare has been a good thing since it started around 1980, but now the system needs changing. Or we'll go broke.
As a for instance moral dilemma , there's a new drug that will keep a terminally ill child alive. It costs $500,000 a year to treat the poor kid. Do we spend $5,000,000 to keep him going for another 10 years, then to die, never having contributed a cent in tax dollars, or do we say sorry, it's too expensive, and the money could be (better?) spent providing perhaps thousands of hip and knee replacement or cataract operations and other treatments benefiting many many more Aussies rather than just one (temporarily).
Personally I don't know the right answer. If it's my kid, I say spend the money.
Anyway, that's a long dialogue....

Thats a bit like the cf drug kalidico that's being rallied to be put on the pbs. It's expensive but will give a greater quality of life.

Personally I don't have a problem with this, or paying taxes to experiment with medical marijuana either.

What I don't agree with is propping up medicare for smoking illnesses, and substance abuse.

Two years ago our eldest was diagnosed with Perthes disease. The specialist at the RCH is Europian, the doctor who picked it up is Chinese, and our regular doctor is Egyptian; and we think the world of them all. There are cultural differences of course (a lack of apparent empathy from the chinese doctor for example); but as far as I'm concerned, if your not prepared to work with these cultural differences, then dont bother seeing a doctor.

Every profession has its mediocrity unfortunately.

Originally Posted by sashadidi

In New Zealand in the early 1980s when I did medical intermediate year there were interviews but there was a" known" background to those interviews as well. In those days it could much more depend on whether your father was a doctor, you were an excellent rugby player who could help the university continue its winning run, these two helped you get in more easily even with lower grades (B average) also there as a ethnic quota as well if you were of Maori descent as well.
The rest of us poor peasants needed A average and a good( lucky) interview and one of the first questions was what high school you went to which was code for if not a private school of a certain class you stood little chance first time around.
Now it has changed for the better,up to 30% is based on your background and personality(suitably to relate to people etc) they now suggest to sit the compulsory psychological profile test ( about 3 hours) before you go medical school or even sit the medical intermediate year exams as well to test your reactions under stress among other things as you can learn but need to be able to apply that knowledge under stress otherwise all that learning is useless in real life so its definitely improving, the ethnic quota let some people who were really great doctors get into the medical school who would have missed out judging by their grades but who are excellent empathetic doctors especially in general practice but also some who were not capable of passing but demanded extra exams and re sitting of exams because they had failed as well and were never going to pass anyway. All sorts of people in medicine and there is a lot of stress as well and indeed doctors and dentists do have a higher suicide rate than the average population as well. a fair percentage drop out along the way as well.
The medical profession represents a cross section of society with all its flaws as do say the police or similar groups.
Remember they might have already done 85 hours that week especially in A&E and cannot be on top of their game all the time......

A guy who was one year ahead of me at primary school became a GP. He is long retired. Wealthy father and he inherited well. He reckoned when he applied to UQ to start studies in 1958 a prospective med. student had to have a good Senior pass and was supposed to have passed Latin but this could be glossed over. What was important was one's school, what one's father did, your mother's family, your father's lodge and clubs, and did you play a good game of cricket and/or Rugby Union. Somehow a number of state high school students and catholics managed to scrape in.