Sunday, 24 January 2010
Australian Health Minister Nicola Roxon is not telling the truth about the Medicare e-card
Remember over the course of 2009 the Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon assuring everyone within hearing that the new Medicare smart card would contain data and, give access to a database, which could be checked for accuracy by individual patients and that information would only be given out if the individual patient agreed to participate in the e-health scheme?
This is what the Minister was putting about at the time:
Eventually, the plan is for each person to have an individual e-health record, which holds their personal details; a summary health profile that can be shared with the person's permission between treating doctors; event summaries such as hospital discharge reports, care plans and test results, and a self-care management record where people can add their own material. and Ms Roxon has said participation in e-health records schemes would be voluntary and yet again All Australian residents will be allocated an Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) to support better communication between healthcare providers involved in patient treatment – but no patient will be forced to use it to access any health service.
Believed her did you?
Well, she told whoppers - barefaced and knowingly.
The proof is in the draft Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 which contains no precise provisions along those lines.
All the bill does is allow for the collection, storage and dissemination of personal and health information without the patient's explicit knowledge or consent.
This outrageous bill relies on p*ss poor protections found in the Commonwealth Privacy Act, which has few teeth to redress bureaucratic wrongdoing in relation to misuse of personal information or inaccurate record keeping.
The Privacy Act was never designed to cover a national health information datatbase and National Privacy Principles also only contain general intents that informed consent be given for data collection and dissemination or that an individual be given access to their information {thanks to Clarencegirl for pointing that out to me}
As for what looks like exemption for incorporated medical practices from any application of the Criminal Code in relation to improper handling or misuse of personal health information compiled for or received from the national database - well the mind boggles.
While NEHTA's claim that “There is also a very strict audit trail so that any individual can know that someone has accessed their record in the system which is an additional layer of security" is just plain absurd when there is no legislative requirement in place which would allow any individual patient to be informed if their records had been accessed and by whom.
But what really has the Rudd Government falling down that rabbit hole into an alternative reality is the fact that politicians and "well-known personalities" will be given special false identities to prevent their medical records falling into the wrong hands.
Apparently the threat of your personal medical details falling into the wrong hands is an acceptable risk, but the risk is not acceptable when it comes to the personal medical details of Rudd & Roxon or their mates. {Yep, three cheers here for egalitarian Australia}
And what is the Rudd Government going to do with all this very detailed information (right down to whether a twin was delivered first or second) it intends to collect?
Well b#gger all, because no state or territory or hospital or medical practice or doctor or community nurse is anywhere near geared up for this giant trawl though the nations' private life and may never be.
For state governments have not proceeded past a sort of glorified memorandum of understanding on e-health in effect until 30 June 2012.
Roxon's information collection through compulsory sixteen-digit health identifiers is looking more and more like a national identity database in disguise.
No wonder there's such an uproar among the privacy watchdogs.
When did the Australian Labor Party lose its basic common sense?
Saturday, 23 January 2010
You don't have to pay peanuts to get monkeys
Our local newspaper just announced that Tweed councillors are asking for a hefty pay rise.
TWEED councillors have "selflessly" voted to push for a 55 per cent pay rise – not for themselves but for the many other people they say will consequently be encouraged to stand for election.
Councillors voted six to one on Tuesday night to ask the NSW Remuneration Tribunal to raise their annual councillors' fees by $8500 with only Greens Party councillor Katie Milne voting against the motion.
The move will take their pay to $24,000 a year except for Mayor Warren Polglase who will get $57,840 as well as a car, if the tribunal approves the increase."If you pay peanuts you get monkeys," said Cr Kevin Skinner. "By providing a higher form of remuneration we give an opportunity to someone in the community who otherwise could not afford to be a councillor."
I thought I'd share this particular 'poll' on simian pay rates.
If a pay rise was performance based, who do you think should not get one?
G & T
Tweed
UN State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report does not paint a flattering picture of Australian society
According to Inter Press Services on 14 January 2010:
"Indigenous peoples suffer from poorer health, are more likely to experience disability and reduced quality of life and ultimately die younger than their non-indigenous counterparts," says the State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report released by the Department of Social and Economic Affairs (DESA) at the United Nations. This alarming statement is corroborated by statistics in the report which find that consistently, and internationally, indigenous communities are more likely to contract tuberculosis, malnutrition, diabetes, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and to commit suicide than non-indigenous communities. There are also significant gaps in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous people – a difference of as much as 20 years in Australia and Nepal. A collaborative study produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada shows that the Inuit are over 150 times more likely to contract tuberculosis than the non-indigenous population. Suicide rates among indigenous youth are strikingly high when compared with non-indigenous youth, particularly in Brazil, where a study carried out by the Brazilian Ministry of Health found that between 2000 and 2005, the rate of Guaraní youth suicide was 19 times higher than the national average. The report also finds that indigenous women and children are particularly vulnerable to poor health, and women are disproportionately affected by violence because of structural discrimination and racism, and the added dimensions of gender bias and poorer levels of education. The report links the denial of certain fundamental rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to poor health among indigenous communities, and cites a failure of the Millennium Development Goals to identify and consider indigenous concepts of health, which, beyond the individual's physical and mental well-being accounts for the well-being and spiritual balance of the community.
The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report is the result of a collaborative effort, organized by the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Chapters were written by independent experts.
The report acknowledges that in February 2008 the Australian Government formally apologized to the Stolen Generation and that in August 2009 it also endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, reversing the position of the previous Howard Government.
The UN report further noted the disproportionate percentage of indigenous Australians serving time in goals around the country and broadly linked this to discrimination in earlier stages of the justice process.
The report highlighted the fact that indigenous Australians generally live shorter lives, have poorer health care and education, higher than normal levels of inadequate housing and endure higher unemployment rates.
The Koori Mail reported on 15 January 2010 that the Rudd Government rejects elements of the UN findings:
A UNITED Nations report, The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples, is based on outdated information, according to the Federal Government. A spokesperson said rather than a 20-year gap in life expectancy, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced in May 2009 the new figures were now between 9.7 years for women and 11.5 years for men...
The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples:
Foreword by Mr. Sha Zukang Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs
Introduction by the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
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