Health spending

Health spending

In the lead up to every election there is always a heated debate about health. How much will each side spend, who will take control of the hospital system, which side of the political divide will spend more to make you healthy. And naturally, each election more money is promised to fund more doctors to dispense more new drugs.

In 2003 we spent $41 billion on health. In that same year, 78 per cent of the population experienced one or more long-term health conditions.

Einstein says that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to see a different result”. So we have to ask ourselves: are we on the right track? What if we could get better results in our health care system whilst spending less money?

Well apparently we can. The UK published a major review of health funding in 2002. The interesting thing about this review is that it was led by the treasury rather than the department of health, and the man authoring the report was an ex-chief of one of the Uk’s biggest banks.

This report looked at three different scenarios for future health spending and found that the most cost-effective was the so-called “fully-engaged” scenario, which involved high levels of public engagement in health care. In other words, lots more money spent on prevention and promoting healthy lifestyles.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, less than 2 per cent of all health expenditure in Australia is directed towards public health.

Ask anyone in the street and they will tell you that when it comes to health, prevention is better than cure. It is just commonsense that you are better off working towards having a body that is functioning to its full potential so that you don’t get sick, rather than waiting until you get sick and then trying to treat the symptoms, and now we know that it makes more economic sense to do so.

We know for example that in Australia, the total economic benefit of money spent reducing tobacco use exceeds the capital outlay by at least 50:1. Imagine putting your money in the bank and getting a 50:1 return – sounds pretty good, doesn’t it!

So what can we do?

The first thing, of course, is that there needs to be a stronger focus on public health spending. This needs to occur in two ways.

The first thing is that people need to be better informed. From primary school age right through to the elderly, people need to be receiving better information on both the effects of toxic, unhealthy lifestyles and perhaps more importantly the benefits to them of healthier lifestyles, including the economic benefit.

The second thing is that we need to put programs in place to make it easier for people to make these choices. Things like improving the food choices in school canteens are a fantastic start. Creating areas and spaces in the community where people can exercise and participate in sport is also important. Investing in sport, particularly at the grass roots level, and making it more cost effective for people to utilise healthy lifestyles is also helpful. This can be done either by reducing taxes and tariffs or providing tax rebates for healthy choices such as fresh fruits and vegetables, exercising, and utilising health care providers who promote healthy lifestyles such as chiropractors, dieticians, personal trainers or counsellors.

So rather than the same old promises about more heath spending or “removing the blame game”, if we see a lot more innovations and investment in public health spending this election campaign we will all be better off, both in our health and our hip pocket.

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