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Issue No. 212 | 12 March 2004 |
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Unfriendly Fire
Interview: Baby Bust Safety: Dust To Dust Bad Boss: Shaming in Print National Focus: Work's Cripplin' Us International: Bulk Bullies History: The Battle for Kelly's Bush Economics: Aid, Trade And Oil Review: The Art Of Work Poetry: Sew His Lips Together
The Soapbox Sport Politics Postcard
 Bring Back GoughSeven Good Reasons To Save MedicareNaked Leading The Blind
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Tool Shed UNHEALTHY TOOL
***** Some extraordinary egos have paraded in public life in recent years, but none have tipped a bucket on working people so much as the Claytons Liberal Senator for South Australia, Meg Lees. Is poor Meg just John Howard in a frock? The woman who gave us a GST on tampons was at it again last week, signing off on a deal that will gut public health insurance and Meg stormed off out of the Democrats some time back, spitting the dummy when she couldn't get her way. She backed up this excellent example of being a team player by setting up a party in her image. O one remembers the name of her party any more, and why should they? We'll never hear from it again after the next federal election. This is the same discredited buffoon who campaigned on the basis that a vote for her was a vote against the GST, only to roll over and inflict the GST on Australia at the first opportunity. Meg bangs on about improving Medicare, but what part of the word universal doesn't she understand? Listening to her you'd think she'd discovered a cure for AIDS, but in fact what she has delivered is something in the order of 0.1% of the national income to be thrown at turning Medicare into a charity program. Thanks to Meg, Tony Abbott's mates in the rich people's health care system will now be rolling in it, while working Australians are bled dry by these parasitical vampires. The private health sector, from the health insurers to the private hospitals that piggyback off our tax dollars, are designed to turn people's misfortune into a profit. Health care should be about making sick people well, not making sickos wealthy. Meg either has a philosophical objection to working families getting decent affordable health care, or she is a moron. Howard used to stain his sheets dreaming of dismantling something that gave working people affordable health care. He threw the psychopath Abbott at the health portfolio to try and dismantle it. Abbott should get back to ripping wings off flies and beating up on cripples, he seems to enjoy that. If Meg thinks that these clowns are doing anything except engaging in a cynical exercise in pulling Medicare to pieces then she's dumber than she looks. If she seriously thinks that this package will improve the lot of families that are already struggling to find a GP who bulk bills then it must be a wonderful planet she lives on, and certainly very different from planet Earth. The real issue is raising the rebate for doctors who bulk bill to something approaching reality. Meg may think she's improved Medicare, rebadging the new charity driven outfit as Medicare Plus. The only thing that s missing from this package is provision for paupers' graves and workhouses for people to work off their health bills. All this pointless palaver about safety nets ignores the fact that Medicare IS a safety net. If Meg thinks it needs a safety net then maybe it's because Medicare as it exists is underfunded and being run into the ground by the bozos that run the shop at the moment. Meg can go into the Tool Shed until she shows signs of remission, and develops a human side to her blinkered worldview and starts to understand what this Federal Government is doing to working Australian families. Medicare plus? It's enough to make anyone sick.
Nominate a Tool!
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