The message that I, and presumably anyone with any sense and influence have been trying to convey to the coalition – that their ehealth policy does not serve the national interest and represents an election liability – seems finally to have been heard.
I say “seems”, because the apparent change of heart hasn’t so much been announced as squeezed from a tube. I refer you to two statements from shadow health minister Peter Dutton that have been completely overlooked by the mass media, largely because interpreting them has been much like reading the runes.
The first inkling we seemed to get was on August 6, in the form of a statement commenting on the AMA’s concerns about the absence of ehealth from the coalition’s policies. Dutton said: “We are committed to e-health into the future. We do strongly support a roll-out of e-health and the funding is there until 2012.”
“We don’t trust Labor with money; we don’t trust them because they have wasted it in every other area,” he said. “We will review why Labor has gone nowhere on e-health in three years and whether or not the money is being most efficiently spent.”
It had the appearance of a throw-away line, and nobody appears to have cottoned on to what Dutton meant.
Then, during yesterday morning’s Radio National Health Report, when Norman Swan was grilling both Nicola Roxon and Peter Dutton on their respective policies, we had the following exchange (the transcript is here):
Swan zeroes in on integration during his interview with Dutton: “I don’t see any strong reform there in terms of integration and you’re dropping spending on ehealth – one of the things that could actually integrate our health care system. How are we going to be better off in terms of integrating our fragmented system under your government?”
Dutton: Well I want to make a couple of points about ehealth, it was Tony Abbott as Health Minister who invested hundreds of millions of dollars into ehealth and got us to probably a much better situation, particularly in general practice now than we have ever had before. But one of the big frustrations in ehealth is that over ten years right across the country at a Commonwealth and State level we’ve spent about $5 billion and still we don’t have the integration that you talk about or a service which people can point to as revolutionary in the E-health space. Now it is a slowly developing area of policy I understand that but what I’ve said is that ehealth is funded now out until the end of the financial year of 2012 so the 30th June 2012, the funding stays in the system for ehealth.
Swan (you can imagine the double-take): So you’re not taking the $400 million out that was promised by COAG?
Dutton: There’s money that’s promised post 2012 but what we’re saying is we don’t believe that this government has the right answer yet. I don’t believe that there is a proper engagement with the private sector. I don’t think that our money is best spent in developing Rolls Royce systems when we don’t even have the basics put together in the system yet. So all I’m saying is yes, we are committed to ehealth going forward -
Swan: So just to get your commitment $400 million stays in promised by COAG through to 2012? (Confusing this, because the figure of $466.7 million was in the Budget, earmarked for a person-controlled electronic health record over the next two years.).
Dutton: The money that’s in the system until 30th June 2012 the coalition is committed to, but in post that period of 2012 we’re saying we want to have a look at where the Federal Government’s taken this money, we don’t want to end up with another insulation debacle, we want to make sure that the money is going to achieve outcomes and more quickly than they’ve been achieved over the last three years because ehealth is crucial.
That would seem to me to constitute a welcome, if all-but-invisible backflip on Joe Hockey’s axe-wielding. But if I’ve got this completely wrong, feel free to let me know. I’d like to know whether I should pop a champagne cork or not.
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