Health policy ‘blinkered’ to greater risks for poor, jobless

THE greater risk of disease if you are poor or unemployed was spelled out in detail by health officials five months ago.

THE greater risk of disease and death if you are poor or unemployed in Australia was spelled out in detail by health officials in a paper prepared five months ago — ostensibly for then health minister Peter Dutton.

While the Abbott government has largely ignored a global push for policies to address the so-called social determinants of health, those issues were being discussed in-depth by the Health Department as early as August last year.

According to documents ­obtained under Freedom of Information laws, assistant secretary David Cullen briefed one meeting on a “preliminary research paper produced by the Strategic Policy Unit at the request of the Secretary and Minister Dutton on socio-economic gradients in health”.

The paper showed how morbidity, or disease, occurs more often in: poor households (the rate in the poorest households is 2.6 times the rate in the richest); communities with no education (the rate in the least educated communities is 1.2 times the rate in the most educated); unemployed groups (the rate for those out of the labour force is 3.1 times that of those who have jobs); remote areas (the rate in remote and very remote Australia is 1.4 times the rate of those living in major cities); and among indigenous Australians (3.7 times the rate of kidney disease, 3.3 times the rate of diabetes).

Premature death is also more common among those groups. By way of example, every percentage point difference between areas in the number of adults facing financial stress corresponds to an increase of about four premature deaths for every 100,000 people.

The documents state the paper was commissioned by Mr Dutton, and would be sent to his office, but a spokeswoman for the department suggested that was incorrect.

Critics of the government’s proposal for a medical co-payment — both the first model and the second model now set to be nobbled in the Senate — have ­argued it would make healthcare inaccessible for poor people. Consumers Health Forum chief executive Adam Stankevicius said the government appeared driven by ideology. “Besides its own department’s advice, the Abbott government has available to it a range of credible proposals to make healthcare more cost effective,” he said, adding the government ­appeared “blinkered” to the Health Department work.