“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."
                                                                              Thomas Jefferson

Whatever we said in all other policies may not make any sense to you if you are not healthy. Good health is the prerequisite for all other things in life and we’re well aware of this fact. Another fact is that our health system is far from perfect and thousands of people undeservedly suffer and die every day due to problems which can be easily solved. We shall do our best to fix the system by setting up new, high standards in health care based on increased spending and fresh new initiatives:

• Instead of pushing more people into private health insurance by tax and other penalties (another sick baby of the Howard government) we shall strengthen the Medicare system and extend its cover to many essential treatments, procedures, tests and therapies currently not on the list. We shall encourage more doctors to offer bulk billing by new tax and financial incentives. 

• Eradicate our infamous reputation as the nation of the rotten teeth by the introduction of proper free dental services covered by Medicare. These shall cover all routine dental care (except cosmetic procedures) – from checkups and extractions through to fillings and dentures.

• Offer incentive packages in order to attract more doctors working in the country. These measures shall include education, lower taxes, relocation, immigration, superannuation and other assistance for doctors willing to work in selected country areas where health services are insufficient or not available. Such packages and contracts shall be tailored for 5 and 10 year terms and available to all qualified health professionals.

• Provide free ambulance services covered by Medicare. The last thing you want to think of after a serious health accident is the ambulance bill (assuming you’re not a member like most of us) which is often worth thousands of dollars. How are you going to earn this money when you’re sick, in hospital or recovering from serious injury and may not able to work for extended period of time? What is the use of our Medicare if you can’t make it to the hospital on time, fearing that the ambulance bill would send you broke even if you somehow survive...

• Encourage healthy lifestyle by abolishing the Medicare levy for people who practice healthy lifestyle and take good care of their health by staying away from the dangers of smoking, alcohol, drugs, obesity, tattoos, body piercing, etc. (in fact all these categories attract extra premiums in any type of health insurance)

• Build many new hospitals and medical centres or extend existing ones in order to offset chronic hospital bed shortages and long waiting lists in many urban and country areas (based on patient per hospital bed statistics)

• Provide tax relief and encourage the development, production, acquisition, import and export of modern medical technology.

• Offer more courses and incentives for medical education and training in order to meet the increased demand. Vastly improve the teaching of biology, anatomy and other health-related subjects in schools in order to promote healthy lifestyle and inspire future health practitioners.

• Substantially increase taxation of unhealthy products and services, such as alcoholic drinks, tobacco, brothels & escorts, tattooing, body piercing, etc.
  

• Provide affordable capped government medical indemnity cover for all health professionals

• Extend the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme by adding many new prescription drugs essential for the cure of serious diseases which are still beyond the budget of many sufferers.

• We shall promote love, responsible relationship, safe sex and modern birth control practices in order to curb sexually transmitted diseases and manage population growth. We believe abortion shall be available to all women willing to terminate unwanted pregnancy and fully covered by Medicare.

• Your life belongs to you and nobody else. We’ll do our best to make it worth living, but this may still not be good enough for some. Whilst we feel very sad about our limited ability to make life more attractive for those people, we shall also legalize euthanasia and make it fully covered by Medicare.  Terminally, seriously ill and healthier people shall be allowed to end their lives if they wish to do so. Such wish shall be registered by your GP and confirmed after a period of 1 year. The procedure shall only be carried out after obtaining written consent from patient’s immediate family.

• We shall ban the sale, import and manufacturing of all tobacco products 10 years after we form a government and pass suitable legislation.

• It is a pity that thousands of sick people wait for years and many of them die because of shortage of life-saving organ and tissue transplants. At the same time many others die and often waste their perfectly good body due to ancient traditions, religion or other non-medical reasons. Organ donation is a vital gift of life which can save the lives of many others. Instead of offering our lifeless body to the worms it can save the lives of up to 10 other people. The memory of us together with our own flesh shall continue to live much longer than any worm can remember... Sadly our organ donors are just a tiny percentage of the population and not enough to satisfy the growing need for organs. We shall encourage more people to consider this humane gift by offering priority medical treatment to each organ and blood donor and their  family (e.g. if you’re organ/blood donor and your mother is on the waiting list for transplant, she’ll get it much quicker compared to someone else who isn’t from donor family). Registration of all organ donors shall also be streamlined so vital time can be saved before the organs and tissue can be “recycled”.
  
• Introduce scheduled free annual health checks which would assist in early diagnosis, management and cure of many diseases

Also see: Animals; Sexuality; Drugs, alcohol & smoking