Media Watch

[Gozu]

"New political reporting...it's facts, not fads, that really matter":

But increasingly The Australian is so one-eyed, so self-obsessed, so self-righteous, that even when it is right, one distrusts the facts on which the conclusions are based.

And it is The Australian we are talking about. Other News Limited newspapers may not have distinguished themselves with penetrating political analysis, but they were mostly down the middle and they split fairly evenly in their election eve editorials.

We shouldn’t blame The Australian for everything. It is what it is. And after all, has a tiny circulation compared to its tabloid stablemates. Part of the problem is that the competing mainstream media lack the vigor and energy to provide an alternative and a corrective. Too often, they follow anyone prepared to give a lead.

Take insulation batts. How many Canberra journalists have read Rodney Tiffen’s analysis, for example, which suggests that the whole “shambles” was not necessarily a shambles at all. This was published well before the election campaign, yet seems to have had no impact upon it. If Tiffen is wrong, nobody has said why. So was the media reporting fact or fiction when it kept repeating the claim that the Government was to blame for deaths?

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/09/13/new ... ly-matter/

[redandblack]

Sorry for your loss.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010 ... te=thedrum

Seems to be catching on since I raised it a while ago

[southee]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/medicare- ... 5919843936

Great...having a baby in November (1st child) and Gillard and Roxon have just made my day!!!!

Obviously, trying to get rid of the private health system.

More pressure put back on Public Health....why the hell bother anymore with private health????

The Robin Hood/Como way of thinking by the Labour Govenment is starting already.

[gossipgirl]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/medicare-cap-a-blow-for-mothers-in-waiting/story-e6frea6u-1225919843936

Great...having a baby in November (1st child) and Gillard and Roxon have just made my day!!!!

Obviously, trying to get rid of the private health system.

More pressure put back on Public Health....why the hell bother anymore with private health????

The Robin Hood/Como way of thinking by the Labour Govenment is starting already.

Article indicates the reason behind this is due to doctors being greedy and doubling fees. Capitalism at its worse

[Psyber]

Article indicates the reason behind this is due to doctors being greedy and doubling fees. Capitalism at its worse

While there are exceptions - usually among the top procedural specialists, most doctors fees are down in real terms compared with years ago.
The Medicare rebate has risen by 64%, or less in some fields, of CPI/AWE since 1975, creating a huge gap between realistic fees and the Medicare rebate.

This has made bulk-billing almost impossible except in General Practice where there are special concessions which include higher rebates for certain types of patient and up front Practice Incentive Payments.
In addition, unpaid paper work for the bureaucracy has increased, and the PIP payments for GPs are tied to them reporting "anonymised" statistics to Medicare.
Until the mid-1980s I bulk-billed all pensioners and Health Care Card holders.
I really couldn't afford to now, as in my field nobody can afford to pay the huge Medicare created gap to the full fee and thus subsidise my bulk billing others.

[gossipgirl]

just another case of the rich getting richer

[Psyber]

I've quit medical practice because it's not worth bothering any more.
Last year, after an approach by local GPs and a local private hospital, I tried running a bulk billing specialist practice to provide support for the GPs, and under-privileged patients, of the Mt Barker region.

I could afford to do it because I don't need to make much money due to an inheritance, and the private hospital where I was based cut my costs to the bone to help provide the service.
However, I found only 60% of the patients who made an appointment actually turned up, and realised I was running at a loss as well as sitting around wasting my time.
[Most of the non-arrivals didn't even bother to ring to advise they were not coming.]

The not turning up pattern is something that has developed since about 2000 or so, and it was a real problem when I was in full time practice in Melbourne.
There, it was costing me $90 an hour to keep the door open with rent, staff, insurance, and registration costs, which came out of my pocket if no one turned up.
[That's why there is a tendency to bill for non-arrivals these days.]

[gossipgirl]

well good onya for trying and a pity the patients didnt appreciate it. These days its quite hard to get in to see your own doctor, quite often have to wait a few days and they are always packed out.

[southee]

well good onya for trying and a pity the patients didnt appreciate it. These days its quite hard to get in to see your own doctor, quite often have to wait a few days and they are always packed out.

Hence what private health insurance was for......take the pressure off the public system.

[Gozu]

well good onya for trying and a pity the patients didnt appreciate it. These days its quite hard to get in to see your own doctor, quite often have to wait a few days and they are always packed out.

Exactly in my experience doctors are always booked out and sometimes you have to make an appointment weeks in advance. A doctor I know double books as well. They make a killing. These are at practices that do bulk billing, one of the biggest problems is so many people expecting to be bulk billed who can afford it.

[southee]

well good onya for trying and a pity the patients didnt appreciate it. These days its quite hard to get in to see your own doctor, quite often have to wait a few days and they are always packed out.

Exactly in my experience doctors are always booked out and sometimes you have to make an appointment weeks in advance. A doctor I know double books as well. They make a killing. These are at practices that do bulk billing, one of the biggest problems is so many people expecting to be bulk billed who can afford it.

Gozu, if I was a doctor I would want to make a killing too. All the responsibility of life and death situations. In one bad move your whole career is over and you are liable.

[Gozu]

Gozu, if I was a doctor I would want to make a killing too. All the responsibility of life and death situations. In one bad move your whole career is over and you are liable.

It's not as simple as that southee. A lot of doctors get away with a lot of dodgy stuff, I'm not saying they all do it but some of the stuff I've heard makes my blood boil.

[Psyber]

Gozu, if I was a doctor I would want to make a killing too. All the responsibility of life and death situations. In one bad move your whole career is over and you are liable.

It's not as simple as that southee. A lot of doctors get away with a lot of dodgy stuff, I'm not saying they all do it but some of the stuff I've heard makes my blood boil.

There are rogues in every field including Medicine, but the majority do enter the field because they want to help people - even if disillusionment catches up with some later..

In my case my father's chronic ill health was a motivating factor in my choice, and I planned, originally, to work in public health.
However, it is frustrating, and disillusioning, in the public sector having clerks try to tell you how to treat people and which medications you are allowed to prescribe.
It was that situation that made me change my mind about staying in the public system after nearly 8 years working in it.
I left for private practice where what the patient needed was the clear priority, and you didn't have to keep fighting the bureaucrats every day.

However, the reality is that running a private practice costs big money these days, as costs have risen disproportionately to earnings, particularly rent and liability insurance.
So, you have to earn a lot to make a reasonable living commensurate with the time spent training on top of paying those costs.
[I was 24 by the time I became a doctor, and 30 by the time I had finished specialist training, and of course you have to keep up to date from there on.]

In my specialty the AMA recommends a fee of $295 per hour based on CPI and practice costs adjustments since 1973, but that is rarely charged as the Medicare benefit has fallen well behind inflation and is only $130.20. By contrast in 2008 a law firm handling a will charged me $350 and hour for the junior's and $450 an hour for the senior's time.
[The fact that governments never criticise the lawyers may be related to the fact that so many politicians go back to legal practice when they leave politics. ]

[Gozu]

"The Oz versus the Greens: well beyond the normal News Ltd bias":

Judging by the frantic self-justification yesterday and today, the penny has dropped at The Australian that they have overplayed their hand in declaring their desire to destroy the Greens.

It’s one thing to be biased in your coverage. The paper’s consistent partisanship and open hostility to Labor is taken as read by all except its most blinkered adherents — even, perhaps, by its own journalists, some of whom are prone to reassuring people outside the News Ltd bubble that they don’t really agree with many of the things they write and shouldn’t be judged on them. And to an extent it’s understandable, given the paper’s declining readership that skews much older and wealthier than even other newspapers.

But its declaration of war on the Greens is a whole step beyond that.

An example of how they will try happened earlier this week. On Monday, The Australian put together a story about Greg Combet and his attitude toward coal, given its prominence in his electorate. A journalist from the paper called the Greens to invite them to respond to Combet’s comments. Sensing a trap, the Greens refused to cooperate, offering an anodyne comment about “building a working relationship” with Labor. Yesterday, according to the Greens, another journalist from The Australian called again to try to extract a more useable, aggressive quote about Combet and coal, and when the Greens refused again to play along, threatened to run a “Greens going soft on coal” story and ring around environment groups to elicit hostile comments about them. The Greens have mentioned the incident to environment groups and suggested they be on the alert for journalists from The Australian trying to manufacture splits in the environmental movement.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/09/15/the ... -ltd-bias/

[redandblack]

You have to admire the Murdoch press

Tony Abbott breaks his word.

Tony Windsor says Abbott can't be trusted and has proven that the Independents made the right decision.

The Advertiser's take on this today?


"Abbott says Gillard formed a government that's essentially"

Then picture of Gillard smothered with a screaming headline

"BASED ON A LIE"


They don't even pretend any more

[ORDoubleBlues]

The part of what a lot of people forget when it comes to "why does it take so long to have their cases heard?" is that they have thrown away their ID after they've landed in Indonesia from their plane in the middle east. They do have ID but they choose to throw it away, so if you want your cases for asylum heard quickly keep your ID on you rather than throw it into the ocean

[redandblack]

The Age:

Main story:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/liber ... utostart=1

"Liberal split over role. Somlyay says Abbott issued a false statement. They're his words, not mine, says Somlyay."

The Australian:

Small story - 'confusion' in Abbott's office.

It's getting harder for them. He's lost the plot.

[Leaping Lindner]

The Age:

Main story:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/liber ... utostart=1

"Liberal split over role. Somlyay says Abbott issued a false statement. They're his words, not mine, says Somlyay."

The Australian:

Small story - 'confusion' in Abbott's office.

It's getting harder for them. He's lost the plot.

It's nice living in a city that has an actual paper

[Gozu]

News Ltd is continuing it's war on the Greens via right-wing extremist Miranda Devine, "Devine's got the Green's number":

Where to begin with Miranda Devine’s hate-mongering first post at her new News Ltd digs, “What it really means to be Green“? (Note the capital “G” there.)

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2 ... ns-number/

[Leaping Lindner]

News Ltd is continuing it's war on the Greens via right-wing extremist Miranda Devine, "Devine's got the Green's number":

Where to begin with Miranda Devine’s hate-mongering first post at her new News Ltd digs, “What it really means to be Green“? (Note the capital “G” there.)

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2 ... ns-number/

Anyone who compares the Greens to a politcial organisation responsible for the deaths of upwards of 20,000,000 innocent people is a disgrace, and really can't be taken seriously as a commentator on anything. And yet she works for News Ltd .......