On October 11th a Bill is to be presented to the Queensland Parliament which would impose draconian limits on what doctors can say to their patients. If passed, doctors will no longer be able to express their opinion or use their experience, training and education, if that opinion goes against what the Government health bureaucrats determine to be in the general interests of the public.
The National Law originally came into being after the Commonwealth, States and Territories all entered into an intergovernmental agreement in 2008. By that agreement it was established the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (the National Law) would first become legislation passed by the Queensland parliament (s.6.3), which the other States and Territories would then mirror and pass via each of their parliaments (s.6.4), The same intergovernmental agreement established the Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council (s.7.1) charged with overseeing the National Law.
Once passed into law by the Queensland parliament, all the other States and Territories are required to create virtually identical Bills and submit to their parliaments to be made law, thereby effecting the same amendments to the National Law of their State or Territory (s.13.4).
Australian doctors will be bound to follow Government policy regardless of countervailing evidence, which means that Government health bureaucrats will determine how doctors should approach treatment recommendations for their patients.
The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 proposes changes which would give the Queensland Health Ombudsman, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and the Medical Board of Australia unprecedented powers to sanction doctors for expressing their professional opinion based on their assessment of the best available science.
This amendment to the Bill is clearly designed to destroy our healthcare system. A patient visits their doctor for an ‘opinion’, which will be obliterated by the act. Healthcare is nuanced, almost every day I ‘violate’ textbook recommendations because patients do not conform to idealised representations, each has unique features. Those deviations come down to experience, which is the patient’s and doctor’s most powerful asset.
Medicine will cease to evolve. It will become fossilised in the Covid Ice Age. Minor indiscretions like prescribing antibiotics when the indications are blurred could be subject to disciplinary action. Guidelines are contradictory so it would be almost impossible to practise medicine without contravening dictates. Most disease classification is already antiquated with diagnostic definitions set down sometimes 100 years ago or more. This legislation would lead to disastrous consequences for all Australians.
The aim of the Act must be to pave the way for multi-corporate management of healthcare. With 96% of the revenue of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which is responsible for approving all pharmaceutical products including vaccines, coming from the pharmaceutical industry, the potential for conflicts of interest is self-evident. Therapeutic interventions will become legislated in the interests of big pharma. mRNA vaccines could be delivered unopposed on ‘conscience’ grounds, including to children. The cargo in the mRNA vaccines can be changed at will without going through full regulatory approval. By the time our children turn five, they would be comprehensively ‘protected’ by the ‘Pharma Ring of Protection’, vaccinated against everything from diabetes to in-growing toenails, all without the constraints of clinical opinion.
In the absence of a functioning healthcare system, individuals will be encouraged by authorities to seek their healthcare online from approved ‘trusted sources’. Doctors will become demonised as pariahs, depicted as being left behind in the high tech era. We will doubtless be receiving a concoction of ‘junk food’ medicine upsold with pharma fries. For every thought, action and movement there will be a pharmaceutical solution, requirement even. Your mere existence will demand so, for the safety of others.
This obscene piece of legislation paves the way to an Orwellian nightmare, with consequences that go far beyond healthcare, to the very core of our humanity. It’s the desecration of our rights to autonomous existence, it’s the Monty Python boot trampling in the face of every individual Australian. Our children will be stamped, sealed and delivered from birth, with profit potential identified and catalogued.
For the Australian citizen this is our Stalingrad. Defeat here will open the field to unlimited human resources for oppressive forces that can never be turned back. We must oppose this with all our resolve.
‘Frank Mercy’ is a pseudonym for a doctor with a clinical practice who also holds an appointment at an Australian university.
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Nothing will ever change without totally dismantling the health system as it stands, and I can’t see anyone getting to grips with that anytime soon. It doesn’t help that the NHS is seen as some kind of sacred cow that most people praise rather than criticise, despite the evidence in front of their eyes. I am willing to bet 50 to 60% of the management jobs, which often appear to duplicate each other, could be got rid of.
This coming winter…covid, blah blah blah, flu, blah blah blah – and of course it will all the the fault of the general public because they are thoughless enough to catch things, get sick and clutter up the wards. The NHS often has the knack of making you feel you are a nuisance, doesn’t it?
Cleansing the structural Blairism might already help.
Every problem that has afflicted this country since Bliar was encouraged to quit can be attributed to –
Tony Bliar.
That horrible, evil piece of crap will still be undermining this country even when he has been called to Satan’s side.
An interesting question would be how much direct influence he possibly still wields. Eg, both NHS management and the Tony Blair Institute favour the same policy decisions wrt the so-called pandemic. Is this really coincidence or is someone exploiting still existing person networks there?
Poor Satan.
…and Starmer now ‘channeling’ his inner Tony Blair, gawd help us.
Couldn’t agree with you more.
Doubtless there will be an outbreak of mask-enforcement and social distancing at hospitals this month. This will have two effects. First, it will increase the illusion that the NHS is battling with an unprecedented and overwhelming rise in Covid cases, thus diverting attention from the more fundamental long-term and systemic problems that the NHS faces. Secondly, it will provide renewed employment to the mask-bouncers at hospitals and to the installers of sticky-backed arrows and Perspex screens.
PS: it’s Thursday tomorrow; do we bangs saucepans, deploy rainbows or kneel?
Actually, I will be out with my neighbours tonight – not banging pans, just standing around chatting over a bottle or 2 of wine. Every cloud has a silver lining.
For as long as the NHS spends as much as £1 on general political agendas (eg, workforce diversity training instead of medical training), it’s obviously overfunded and throwing more money at it won’t improve anything.
I’ve just been for an x-ray at my local hospital this afternoon and I was not looking forward to it. I was expecting some meeter and greeter with mask and hand sanitiser, but there was none. So I walked in without a mask went to reception booked in. I was taken for an x-ray 10 minutes later and sent on my way without a glance or a word from any member of staff of whom there seemed to be plenty about. A strange experience.
Wow! How lovely! My last encounter with the NHS was in August. Two out of three chairs taped off, plastic screens everywhere & the demand to wear a mask from the reception staff. The HCA who did the pre consultant baselines of height, weight & bp was more than happy to take off hers as was the consultant! He even did a bare hands examination of muscle tone & reflexes.
It’s definitely coming from the top of each Trust. Sadly the compliance amongst the general population attending was high.
Lucky guy. My last few encounters with NHS (dentist and GP) have been very confrontational. Exhausting tbh. Seems to vary wildly though – and that just supports the fact that none of them know what the hell they’re doing or why.
I think you are just being unlucky. Neither my gp surgery nor my dentist (not NHS though) requires masks, and hasn’t done for many months. I think it’s just down to regional variation.
I made an appointment with my GP yesterday (I know what’s wrong and need a prescription-only cream) and the nearest time-slot available is 4 weeks away. And that’s in a small west country town, goodness only knows how long it would be if I lived in an overcrowded city.
From October last year. It’s the annual bleatings for more money etcetera.
As in education, too little money and capacity are not the problem, too much of it certainly is.
Instead, the real problems are attitude, ever worsening work ethics and commitment, internal politics and vested interests leading to now cemented misorganisation and mismanagement.
As with many departments, short term political appointments are subject to manipulation by established professional “servants” which are, in fact “complex and long lasting”. They tend to last long in their jobs, with a nice pension later on.
“The question on everyone’s tongue right now is will the NHS be in crisis this winter?”
Well, let me beg to differ – it’s certainly not a question on my tongue and the subject never entered my head. The opening statement is pure propoganda. Boll Ox.
Actually, the question on my tongue is; are we all going to be nuked into oblivion?
Putting rouge on the cheeks of a corpse. Again.
It is a State run industry. All State run industries fail – fact, backed by multiple examples in multiple Countries over the last Century – and they fail for precisely the same reason, they are State run, therefore they must primarily serve political objectives, secondly serve the interests of the unionised workers who are paid on length of service or grade rather than merit or industry – no incentive to work better/harder.
They cannot go bankrupt and have no shareholders therefore require no fiscal discipline and have no access to private capital. They are cost centres, so there us a perverse incentive to do less to keep within budget. They have no cost/price structure so efficiency/productivity cannot be measured,
There is no competition so consumers have no choice, Leviathan has no need to improve or serve consumer interests.
This will not, can not be changed until the monopoly is taken away and a competitive private market in health insurance and provision can develop.
Absolutely right on every point. Very well said.
Everyone says the NHS is much loved with its free at point of use, but it’s also almost unique in the world in the way it is funded and centrally managed.
Most European systems are to a certain extent ‘private’ in that they’re not managed by central government.
The question is, can a government in the UK change to the European model without too much push back from all the vested interests? Probably not, but one of them really needs to try as the current system of just increasing the money put in is clearly not working.
The other feature that is often not well understood is that some specialists in various roles are available to work for third party private firms, or for themselves, part time. Often in non-NHS buildings just next door, or even in the same building in smaller outfits, such as dental surgeries.
This is relatively unusual in other industries – after all, many contracts do not permit one to work for competitors while employed by a particular firm, for good reasons in most situations.
I am sure face masks worn all day by staff make them feel so much happier and securer in their jobs and the reintroduction of social distancing and other Covid protocols should leave all staff with so much more time for the latest diversity course.