theducks | (no subject)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/08/2210455.htm?section=wa?section=wa :

A health economist has calculated that the government should be willing to spend $15 billion a year to bridge the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Curtin University's Gavin Mooney has estimated the government should spend $340 billion over 22 years, based on the government's spending elsewhere in the health service.[...] He has calculated that the government spends $40,000 per person subsidising a drug that increases life expectancy by one year.

You know, I think if you just paid matching salary to each of Australia's 400,000 Aboriginals of up to $40,000 per year, you'd actually do a lot better job of increasing life expectancy than medicating them. Money for nothing is a recipe for trouble, but doubling income gained from other sources could produce some exciting results, especially if some of that money went into local community trust funds for housing and the like.

Threaded | Flat

Personally putting money into "Aboriginal Health" makes me mad. The only aspects of the health system that should be improved specifically for Aboriginals are bridging the cultural gap and the remoteness gap. Other than that is shouldn't be called an "Aboriginal health problem" but a "people with a high risk of diabetes health problem" or a "alcoholics/people at risk of alcoholism problem" or a "poverty and low education health problem" and if an individual falls into each category, a "poverty, low education, alcoholism and diabetic risk health problem blah blah" Yes, most people in such a category will probably be Aboriginal, but some will not. More importantly, some Aboriginal people will NOT fall into this category.

There's a drug that increases life expectancy by a year? Those wacky doctors!