| 摘要 | Maureen Watts’ mother and both her grandfathers had bowel cancer. So when the 63-year-old Northern Territory resident started to feel ill, she became concerned. When she went to the Royal Darwin Hospital for a colonoscopy, though, she was told that the wait would be at least eight months.
This is hardly surprising. According to an October report from the Australian Medical Association, waiting times are far exceeding acceptable levels.
The median wait for hip surgery in Australian public hospitals is nearly three months. For cataract surgery, it’s more than two months. In the ACT, the median waiting time for elective surgery is 72 days. Major public hospitals throughout Australia are bursting at the seams with bed occupancy rates of well over 100 percent a daily occurrence.
According to a new study from the Legatum Institute, an international development think tank based in London, these kinds of inefficiencies are hurting Australia’s prosperity.
Legatum just released its annual rankings of world prosperity. Australia came in an impressive sixth out of 104 countries surveyed–the top five are all small Northern European countries with populations of less than 10 million. Researchers found that while Australia is very strong on the economic fundamentals required for long-term growth, problems in the healthcare system are keeping Australia from reaching its full potential, in terms of both economic progress and quality of life.
Australia’s stunning economic growth over the past few decades is largely attributable to the Federal Government’s decision to free up the economy.
In the early 1980s, regulators started scaling back the tariffs, quotas, and other protectionist measures established during the Great Depression. Now Australia has strong trade relationships with all the world’s economic superpowers. Indeed, the total value of commodity exports in 2009 is expected to top $160 billion, despite the reduction in world demand. Almost half of those exports are going to North Asia and about a fifth to America.
Consequently, Australia has weathered the global economic turmoil better than virtually any other country. National unemployment has remained relatively low, at 5.8 per cent since June. And GDP increased by 0.6 per cent in the past quarter–the fastest rate among all advanced economies.
Australia’s school system has also played a strong role in its prosperity. The Legatum Index puts this country sixth in its education subcategory.
The Federal Government has established a strong national curriculum and made primary and secondary school financing a priority. And just last year, it spent an estimated $6.5 billion on school improvement initiatives, including establishing trade-school centres, running teacher training programs, and subsidising student laptops and other equipment. Yet the nation’s ailing healthcare system continues to undermine Australian prosperity. It ranked a lowly 21st in this subcategory, behind countries like Singapore, Spain, and the Czech Republic.
Australia lags behind on a number of important healthcare indicators. It’s 28th in infant mortality. It’s 47th for number of doctors per capita. And on available hospital beds, estimates put Australia behind Slovakia and Hungary.
Over-crowding and inefficiency has compromised patient safety. According to the Queensland University of Technology, $1 billion annually is in lost bed days because of hospital-acquired infections. Medical errors cost an estimated $1-2 billion annually, with half of these errors classified as “potentially preventable”.
These healthcare problems are draining billions from the Australian economy, both directly by taking money away from players in the health sector and indirectly by compromising worker health and undermining productivity.
Australians are among the most prosperous populations on the planet. But the country’s health sector is in need of significant improvement. Cutting away waste and improving quality in health care would go a long way toward making Australia even stronger
Roger Bate is the Legatum Fellow in Global Prosperity at AEI. Greg Lindsay is the executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney |
