President addresses the nation encouraging rethink on health spending
Professor Steve Robson launched a new AMA report at the National Press Club encouraging governments to view health spending as an investment, not a cost.
AMA President Professor Steve Robson spoke at the National Press Club this week delivering his speech Investing in what matters most.
The speech outlined the economics underpinning the AMA’s case for governments to view health spending as an investment, while launching the new report Health is the best investment: shifting from a sickcare system to a healthcare system. The report’s costings show billions of dollars lost in productivity as Australians await care.
Professor Robson told the audience and viewers across Australia “investing in health is not only good economic policy — but that such investments can also make a huge difference to the wellbeing of Australians”.
He challenged the prevailing wisdom and “the approach of successive governments to investing in and managing health [which] is very much focused on treating sickness rather than preventing it, which means our struggling healthcare system will remain a ‘sickcare’ system rather than a healthcare system.”
Professor Robson spoke to Channel 7’s program Sunrise the following morning telling viewers “when we have half a million Australians waiting for medical procedures and operations, there are people who aren't participating”.
“So we want to see a focus on making sure funding is spent in the right way to keep people healthy and well in the workforce and not needing a lot of care when they get older.”
“It's just a no brainer that we invest in keeping the country healthy, do it efficiently and have every Australian at their physical and mental peak.”
Professor Robson also spoke with ABC Radio National’s RN Breakfast Program telling listeners “if you spend some money fixing the problem, getting people healthy, then that has a massive multiplier effect and they're much more likely to travel to do things to spend into the economy and they're more able to do a wider range of jobs. So, it makes good economic sense to have every Australian at the peak of their performance”.
