This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Quote Of The Year
Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"
or
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine is ready to start over with the healthcare debate. John McCain is back home indefinitely in Arizona fighting brain cancer.
Republicans can only lose two votes and still pass their embattled health bill, with several other Republicans undecided over whether to proceed. Even so, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky says the Senate will vote early next week on, well, something related to health care.
Collins said Thursday she has “no idea” what that will be.
Many doctors still can’t use a transcription service made by Nuance Communications three weeks after the company was hit by a powerful, debilitating computer attack.
Integrated delivery systems, including Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said eScription, a Nuance product that enables physicians to dictate notes from a telephone, still isn’t functioning. The outage obliterated doctors’ instructions to patients, forcing some to revert to pen and paper.
The computer virus, called Petya, has sent ripples throughout the healthcare industry, which is frequently targeted by hackers, said Michael Ebert, a partner with KPMG who advises health and life-science companies on cybersecurity.
Atul Gawande says machines like Watson can't account for the variability in patient symptoms the way a doctor can.
Renowned surgeon Atul Gawande hasn’t quite bought into the hype of artificial intelligence in medicine, in part because diagnosing a human being is highly variable.
Speaking with George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen, Ph.D., Gawande balked at the idea that a patient could obtain an accurate diagnosis simply by relaying their symptoms to a program like IBM’s Watson. Healthcare is “massively far” from that type of scenario, he said on Cowen’s podcast Conversations with Tyler.
Although most clinicians still use pagers, text messaging is gaining traction despite security concerns.
As more clinicians gravitate toward text messaging to communicate patient information, hospitals aren’t keeping pace with appropriate security protocols.
Pagers continue to be the most popular form of communication among hospital-based clinicians, but more than half are using standard text messaging for patient care-related communication, according to a survey published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed a web-based program that uses team communication and engagement to improve patient experience and outcomes.
The project, called PROSPECT (Promoting Respect and Ongoing Safety through Patient Engagement Communication and Technology), is outlined in the recent issue of Critical Care Medicine. The platform includes shared checklists, health information and goals for the clinician and patient. The project aims to reduce adverse effects such as falls, ulcers and urinary tract infections as well as improving satisfaction rates and customizing care plans.
"Our goal was to shift our clinical thinking from 'What is the matter?' to discovering 'What matters to you?'" said Patricia Dykes, PhD, RN, a senior nurse scientist in the Center for Patient Safety, Research and Practice at BWH and lead author of the paper. "If we can effectively collaborate with our patients and their care partners and engage them in their care, then we have the potential to enhance the care, improve adherence to care plans, positively impact satisfaction rates and reduce healthcare costs."
Data leaks at Dow Jones, Verizon, and a GOP analytics firm show that companies are forgoing security best practices in order to quickly make it to the cloud.
A recent data breach at Dow Jones exposed data including names, addresses, and partial credit card numbers from millions of customers, according to a Monday report from UpGuard. The reason for the leak? Dow Jones simply chose the wrong permission settings for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 data repository.
By configuring the settings the way it did, Dow Jones essential gave any AWS users access to the data. While this seems like an oversight that would be easily caught by an admin, common sense mistakes are rampant among large companies racing to get their data to the cloud.
Dignity Health, Sutter Health and others say Glass Enterprise Edition – which now features a detachable module that can work with other eyewear – has helped with efficiency and allowed doctors to focus more on patients.
Google announced a new version of its Glass technology on July 18, refocusing on ways it can be deployed in enterprise settings such as hospitals.
Glass didn't end up being the hot consumer gadget the company hoped for when it was unveiled amid much hype in 2013. But it's been finding a foothold as a workplace tool in the years since – not least in healthcare.
A critical internal review of NHS Digital has found the organisation relies on out of date technology, has skill shortages in multiple areas and its data services are operating below expectations.
The report also says it is unclear what NHS Digital’s core purpose is, stating that expectations are ill-defined expectations and uncertain operational boundaries adversely affect NHS Digital’s delivery performance.
NHS Digital responded to the Capability Review findings in its Fit for 2020 report, published 18 July, but has yet to publish the actual full review report. The review was carried out by consultants Deloitte and Accenture, both organisations have previously worked closely with NHS Digital and have former staff now working as directors at the organisation.
Digital Health Intelligence’s annual survey of NHS IT leaders has found levels of confidence on achieving national targets on achieving a paperless health service and delivering integrated digital health and care records by 2020 have dropped over the past 12 months.
Uncertainty and delays over promised future national funding for NHS digitisation were cited as the main reasons.
Cyber security is the area that has risen sharply in the priorities of NHS IT leaders in the last 12-months. In 2016, cyber security was a priority for just 23% of NHS IT leaders. But in the 2017 survey, which was carried out before the 12 May Wannacry incident that hit many NHS organisations, it was identified as a priority by 66%.
More than 500 urgent and emergency care staff working across A&E and other acute medical units in Somerset are using the EMIS Web EPR Viewer, to view crucial information in patients’ GP medical records.
Musgrove Park Hospital A&E clinician Philip Rowburrey said he finds that access to EMIS EPR Viewer saves a lot of time, particularly out of hours.
“I also check a patient’s recent consultations to try and establish if their presenting complaint is acute or something that has previously been investigated by primary care”, Rowburrey said. “It is becoming a ‘must check’ when we see a patient now and I thoroughly recommend that this continues.”
Plenty of patients can access their medical records online, but bad user experience often means they won't.
The Government Accountability Office interviewed patients who tried to access their own medical information online. Their chief complaint: Wasted time.
Patients said it takes too much time to set up portals and figure out how each one works. The need to remember multiple passwords also frustrates patients, the agency said in a blog post.
July 19, 2017 - Healthcare organizations need to improve their processes for patient data access measures, as this will reduce consumer burden and also help entities coordinate better care, according to an ONC report.
ONC explained in Improving the Health Records Request Process for Patients that HIPAA regulations allow for patients to request access to their own health data. However, patients and caregivers still face challenges in accessing necessary information.
“In the current records request process, patients and health systems are often at odds, as each struggles through an inefficient system to accomplish needed tasks with limited resources,” report authors wrote. “But ultimately, these two user groups have the same goals — and shared needs. That means that improving the records request process is a win-win.”
As hospitals continue to struggle with sepsis, a leading cause of death and costly patient readmissions, a rapid and accurate point-of-care device has the potential to help physicians better diagnose this serious medical condition caused by an overwhelming immune response to infection.
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois and physicians at the Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill., have completed a clinical study of the sepsis lab-on-a-chip, which counts white blood cells and levels of a protein marker called CD64, which surge as a patient’s immune response increases.
“By measuring the CD64 and the white cell counts, we were able to correlate the diagnosis and progress of the patient—whether they were improving or not,” says Umer Hassan, a postdoctoral researcher at Illinois and the first author of a study published earlier this month in the journal Nature Communications.
With patient care, circumstances can change in an instant. The complexity is compounded for hospital nurses, who typically have several patients to care for at a time—thus, prioritizing care and managing patient populations can become rather difficult.
This is where surveillance comes in. A surveillance tool works in the background of an EHR, and gives clinicians real-time, meaningful information to evaluate and interpret whether a patient experiencing shortness of breath may meet the criteria for sepsis, chronic heart failure, pneumonia or any other condition.
This information is pushed to clinicians as an early warning system, enabling them to quickly identify patients that may be trending toward a bad outcome. Being able to have crucial information sent to staff enables them to save time and intervene earlier in patient care.
Ransomware. The word itself is scary enough, let alone the glimpse of just how damaging such attacks could be that the world saw in WannaCry and NotPetya during May and June. But cybersecurity experts counter that ransomware shouldn’t actually be so overwhelming to information security professionals -- if they adhere to simple best practices.
For starters, backup files are crucial and those should be both encrypted and kept offline -- separate from the main network, according to Engin Kirda, professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer and information science at Northeastern University.
Lee Kim, HIMSS’ director of privacy and security said the real problem is that hospitals are often stuck running outdated, legacy systems. And even keeping pace with software patches is not always completely effective. Both NotPetya and WannaCry, for instance, leveraged vulnerabilities in these legacy systems.
When the Petya attack struck Princeton Community Medical Hospital in West Virginia, the system had to replace infected computers. A community hospital is one thing, but then FedEx on Monday admitted that some of the damage Petya wreaked on its networks may be permanent.
FedEx’s Ukrainian division was hit by the initial attack on June 28, which spread to more of the company’s systems. Officials said the majority of the affected computers were on the TNT Express network, an international transportation, delivery and freight transportation company owned by FedEx.
FedEx officials told the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission in its annual 10-L filing that no data was stolen from the company’s network, but operations and communications were significantly affected.
A new study looks at what patients like about having access to visit notes in the EHR.
There are four primary reasons patients like having access to the notes doctors and other clinicians write after a visit and include in their electronic health record, according to a new study.
With an increasing number of healthcare organizations offering patients access to their EHRs, including visit notes, via patient portals, researchers atOpenNotes and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston wanted to know what patients value about the process. They reported their findings in a study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Written by Julie Spitzer | July 18, 2017 | Print |Email
There have been 791 data breaches tracked in the first half of the year, a record high, according to an Identity Theft Resource Center report obtained by Becker's.
For the report, ITRC gathered and analyzed data breach information from public notices in the U.S. The report, sponsored by CyberScout, comprises five industries: financial, health/medical, government/military, education and business.
Here are six things to know.
1. The health/medical industry experienced 179 breaches in the first half of the year, accounting for 22.6 percent of all U.S. data breaches.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s new proposal to simply repeal the Affordable Care Act appears to already be dead, less than 24 hours after he dropped his replacement plan for lack of support among fellow Republicans.
A handful of Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski, (Alaska), said Tuesday that they would oppose the repeal-first strategy. The dissention eliminates hope that the approach will gain traction in the near term, despite calls for action on Monday night from President Trump and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
So what’s next?
Even with the GOP’s failed effort, there may be additional opportunities for employers to gain relief from ACA requirements in coming months. However, for the healthcare industry, next steps are a bit vague.
Automation is expected to replace millions of jobs in the coming years, but it’s not just blue-collar workers in the crossfire. Technology is changing the way some doctors work, and that could result in lower demand for some specialties.
As artificial intelligence expands into healthcare, radiologists will be among the first doctors who will have to adapt.
That’s because AI can help read the medical images that radiologists use to diagnose and treat patients, providing better services at lower costs by, for instance, improving the analysis of an MRI. "This is going to be transformational," Keith Dreyer, D.O., vice chairman of radiology computing and information sciences at Massachusetts General Hospital, told CNN.
Now that I am in a different style of practice, technology has been a great help rather than a hindrance. I'm surprised at the fact I currently interact with patients due to technology, something I couldn't have imagined before.
My new EHR has a fully functioning portal. It has been great to quickly exchange information with patients, much faster than a phone call. While my patients get an email stating that they have a portal message, the only way I know a patient sends me a message is when I log into the EHR system. I wish the system would send me an email or text to let me know there's a new communication for me. So, I've developed a workaround where I give my cell phone number to my patients and they let me directly they sent a question, usually with a text to my cell phone.
I've been very clear that text and regular email are not HIPAA compliant and I cannot send private medical information through these channels. Thus far, I can say patients have not abused my private number (and after 25 years of having my house phone listed, there is only one time a patient called my home). They respect my time and privacy and so far, only contact me when they are having a crisis.
(Reuters) - A major, global cyber attack could trigger an average of $53 billion of economic losses, a figure on par with a catastrophic natural disaster such as U.S. Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Lloyd's of London said in a report on Monday.
The report, co-written with risk-modeling firm Cyence, examined potential economic losses from the hypothetical hacking of a cloud service provider and cyber attacks on computer operating systems run by businesses worldwide.
Insurers are struggling to estimate their potential exposure to cyber-related losses amid mounting cyber risks and interest in cyber insurance. A lack of historical data on which insurers can base assumptions is a key challenge.
According to the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA) most recent MGMA Stat poll, only 55 percent of healthcare professionals said they believe that their organization’s information technology (IT) infrastructure is secure against attacks.
Meanwhile, 15 percent of healthcare professionals responded they do not think their information technology infrastructure is secure, and another 15 percent responded that they are working on securing their information technology infrastructure.
What’s more, a final 15 percent said that they were unsure of their IT infrastructure’s security against an attack.
The eHealth platform counter recorded precisely 6,000,333 consents on Monday, compared to 35,000 at the beginning of the parliament at the end of 2014, according to the eHealth platform. The number of consents reached the bar of one million at the end of May 2015 and exceeded 5 million at the beginning of this year. -----
MINISTERS are on course to miss their own target for expanding schemes which allow patients to book their GP appointments and order repeat prescriptions online.
90 per cent of surgeries are supposed to offer a digital service for patients by the end of the year
Under the Scottish Government’s flagship eHealth Strategy 90 per cent of surgeries are supposed to offer such digital services by the end of this year.
But new research has revealed just four health boards have reached the goal despite pledges to use technology to bolster frontline care.
Think-tank Reform Scotland found only a quarter of NHS Highland practices offer online appointments booking and/or repeat prescribing.
Researchers said Watson provided actionable insights within 10 minutes, compared to 160 hours of human analysis and curation typically required to reach similar conclusions.
The potential for artificial intelligence in precision medicine is big, according to conclusions of a new study by the New York Genome Center and IBM.
The results, published in the July 11 issue of Neurology Genetics, a journal of the American Academy of Neurology, showed that researchers at the New York Genome Center, Rockefeller University and other institutions – along with IBM – verified the potential of IBM Watson for Genomics to analyze complex genomic data from state-of-the-art DNA sequencing of whole genomes.
“This study documents the strong potential of Watson for Genomics to help clinicians scale precision oncology more broadly,” Vanessa Michelini, Watson for Genomics Innovation Leader for IBM Watson Health, said in a statement. “Clinical and research leaders in cancer genomics are making tremendous progress towards bringing precision medicine to cancer patients, but genomic data interpretation is a significant obstacle, and that’s where Watson can help.”
Patients value the convenience of telehealth as more physicians are using the technology to treat minor ailments.
As telehealth technology continues gaining momentum, patients are realizing the value of virtual care options—even preferring it to in-person care in some instances.
More than half of patients surveyed by the Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA) indicated they were “very satisfied” with a telehealth visit in the last year, and 54% said the experience was better than a traditional office visit.
One hazard of being a cybersecurity reporter is that attackers send phishing emails to my inbox on a daily basis.
If you don't believe me, ask the security team at Time Inc., Fortune's parent company.
Truth is, anyone online can be a target for hackers, spies, and cybercriminals. You might not think you're that interesting, but the funny thing about networks is that even if you are boring (surely, you mustn't be, given that you're a Fortune reader), hackers may still aim to A) profit from your misfortune, and B) use you as stepping stone to get at someone else.
Cybersecurity attacks are becoming more common in the healthcare industry, and new attacks could manipulate patient and device data in a way that would have immediate, potentially life threatening results, according to a new study.
The study, published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, acknowledges the damage of previous attacks like the WannaCry ransomware attack, but calls to attention the potential damage that could be done in future attacks where disruption and stolen patient data aren’t the central target.
The study implied that while attacks which result in breaches of protected health information were dangerous, it said that manipulation of patient data could be “even more damaging.”
Information technology is playing an increasing role in enabling faster patient scheduling for physician appointments, but a recent study suggests that other human factors intervene, actually slowing down the process.
The findings suggest that workflow and attitude adjustments also are important in speeding the appointment process, which is likely to become more important as providers take on more risk for patient care—treatment delayed, in many cases, is believed to drive up care expenses as the conditions of patients worsen over time.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that information technologies, such as scheduling applications, secure messaging and telehealth visits, can play a role in speeding up appointments. However, other factors, including old-school physician beliefs, can contribute to long waits by patients, who may suffer physically and emotionally from delays.
Last week, Senate GOP leaders released a revised version of their potential healthcare reform bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) of 2017.
Although multiple factions within the GOP pressured Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to make changes to the bill, the revised version largely retains the BCRA's original framework. An updated CBO score, with revised estimates of the bill's implications for insurance coverage and affordability, is expected this week and will help set the stage for continued debate.
In the meantime, here are our top four takeaways on the updated bill and its implications for providers:
A rogue Bupa employee has stolen personal customer data from the health insurance giant, leaving more than half a million people compromised.
Bupa Global revealed that one of its staff members had taken international health insurance information affecting 547,000 people.
On 13 July, Sheldon Kenton, managing director of Bupa Global released a statement saying an employee had “inappropriately copied and removed some customer information from the company”.
As head of data security at NHS Digital, people think my job is about systems and technology. It isn’t. My job is about building public trust, and about supporting others within health and care to do the same.
I am unrelenting in my belief that one way we can improve patient outcomes is through digital patient information. This move to digital, which is happening across all aspects of our lives, can help to transform health and care, but it needs to have the right safeguards and controls in place.
I am here to put patient care first, just like frontline organisations who deliver that care, and I would urge every organisation I work with to focus widely on building and maintaining public trust, rather than solely on security.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Dutch National Police, and Europol have cracked down on darknet markets, shutting down two of the major Tor-concealed marketplaces for illegal goods and services: Hansa and AlphaBay.
The US Department of Justice overnight announced that it had seized AlphaBay, the darknet market site that hosted the so-called ‘Medicare Machine’ service.
The Medicare Machine was a service that offered to obtain the Medicare card details of any Australian when provided with his or her name and date of birth.
AlphaBay was considered to be the largest darknet market. The site’s alleged operator, Canadian Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Thailand earlier this month. He died in custody, apparently taking his own life.
The Department of Justice said investigators had found Cazes' personal Hotmail email address, Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com in the header information of a welcome email sent to new AlphaBay users in December 2014.
AlphaBay was believed to have more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors. It supported transactions using a range of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum.
“This is likely one of the most important criminal case of the year,” US attorney-general Jeff Sessions said at a press conference announcing the seizure.
This sounds to me like real progress. It really seems to be important to shut down as much of the dark web as is possible to reduce all sorts of criminality!
On the overseas front we now see President Trump wondering can he pardon all his staff (and himself maybe) to get round the concerns with the relations with President Putin and shut down his potential problems. Heavens we have now moved to fantasy concerns…
Additionally Trump is in awful trouble with his so called ‘health care reform’ legislation. This is looking like a problem that could really cause problems and we see the US moving towards being ungovernable.
Let us give Donald Trump a pass. The last time Congress enacted a serious law was more than seven years ago, which was well before he turned up.
That was Barack Obama's healthcare reform, which is turning into Mr Trump's nightmare. He just cannot get that law off the books.
Congress is a sausage factory that has forgotten how to make sausages. Now Mr Trump wants it to make the largest sausage imaginable: a big tax reform package. But what does Mr Trump know about sausages?The answer is little.
-----
In Australia we have a new mega ministry covering security and the Government suggesting that our economy is wonderful and growing well. Time will tell if that is really true. Behind all this the Turnbull / Abbott imbroglio being ongoing. I wonder how this will turn out as well.
Scott Morrison will today launch a strident defence of the government’s fiscal strategy, warning that an earlier than planned return to budget surplus risks dampening an economy that is gathering momentum for the first time in almost a decade.
The Treasurer will tell the Melbourne Institute/The Australian Economic and Social Outlook Conference that the turnaround in economic momentum is evident in published financial data and in the increasing optimism about the outlook from the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
“This is not some pipe dream or mirage on the horizon, but an emerging picture that can give us confidence,” he says.
The dizzying ascent of global stocks has unnerved analysts in recent months, as lofty valuations and the prospect of interest rate hikes threaten to spark a major sell-off.
The MSCI All-Country World Index, a gauge of global stocks, set a new peak last month.
The Dow Jones hit fresh highs on Friday, while London's benchmark FTSE 100 and the German DAX hit all-time highs in June.
Even disappointing macroeconomic data fails to deter the relentless drive higher in stock markets, as investors continue to pile into stocks with overstretched valuations.
Interest rates won't rise until 2018 and even then increases will be slow and moderate because the Reserve Bank of Australia fears igniting the housing "powder keg", Deloitte Access Economics says.
The firm's latest business outlook acknowledges global momentum to lift rates but insists it will be some time yet before the RBA is comfortable enough to act here.
The report says the RBA central bank is particularly worried about the potentially destabilising effect of lifting mortgage costs, which would add to already high rates of household debt.
Economists at investment bank UBS are increasingly confident a "correction" is taking place in residential construction, led by a slowdown in the apartment sector. But they argue house prices are set to grow more slowly, rather than drop, due to very low interest rates and growth in population.
Scott Haslem and George Tharenou cut their forecasts for dwelling commencements for this year and next in a report to clients last week, also arguing house price growth had been "unsustainable".
After "calling the top" in housing activity in April, the economists said they had "increased confidence that a correction is unfolding" in building activity. They noted official figures that last week showed a 19 per cent year-on-year slump in dwelling unit commencements in the March quarter.
TREASURER Scott Morrison will pave the way for more than 50 smaller lenders to become banks, driving Australians away from the big four and helping families get a lower home loan rate.
In a bid to lessen the power of the big four banks, the government will remove restrictions on which lenders can call themselves banks, arguing it will ramp up competition and provide more options for customers.
Similar reforms in the United Kingdom has encouraged a flood of new lenders to enter the market — prompting the big banks to match their offerings with cheaper mortgages.
Investors do not appear to be forcing the major banks to pay more for wholesale funding as a result of the federal bank tax, despite banks saying the levy threatens to undermine the confidence of funders of Australia's financial system.
When lobbying against the tax, some in the banking industry warned the levy could damage confidence in bond markets, where lenders raise more than $100 billion a year in funding.
However, market pricing trends show there has not been a spike the cost of debt for Australian banks affected by the tax since it was announced in May. This contrasts with the impact in equity markets, where the tax is blamed as one reason for the fall in bank shares.
Colin Brinsden, AAP Economics Correspondent Australian Associated Press
All banks will be allowed to call themselves that no matter their size under eased federal government rules to broaden competition.
The Turnbull government has released draft legislation to allow any banking business with an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) licence to call itself a bank.
At present, only ADIs with capital greater than $50 million are permitted to use the term 'bank'.
Nineteen seventy-four was not a good year for the Australian economy.
Widespread strike action saw industrial disputes hit a record peak of 2.5 million working days lost in the first three months of the year.
The cost of living soared 16 per cent as workers demanded higher wages, which were, in turn, largely gobbled up by higher prices.
The golden era of jobs that had followed the end of World War II came to a shuddering halt, and Australia's jobless rate jumped from 2 per cent towards 5 per cent.
The mainstream centre-right party in the Australian political system naturally needs to govern in a way which provides an attractive umbrella for voters who believe in the core values of John Howard's "broad church" which explicitly and deliberately seeks to reconcile classical liberal and conservative streams of thought.
Some of those voters will see themselves as moderate, others as conservative, many will avoid any particular label but aspire to support the party delivering strong national security, sound economic management and opportunity and a fair go for all. More often than not the practical differences among this universe of voters depend on attitudes to social issues, which are seldom uppermost in choosing a government.
My motivation in accepting the presidency of the Liberal Party is not to promote particular views (or prejudices) but to provide the best possible platform to assist the re-election of the Coalition in 2019, because that represents easily the best and safest choice of national leadership, to promote the peace and prosperity of our nation.
The Reserve Bank will keep official interest rates unchanged until next year, and then only increase borrowing costs slowly, because record mortgage debt has created a "housing powder keg," Deloitte Access Economics says.
In a report that also says slowing in the housing market could drag on growth, the consultancy highlights how sensitive many households are to interest rate changes, which will limit sharp increases in the cash rate, now at 1.5 per cent.
Financial markets have in recent weeks questioned whether the Reserve Bank of Australia may follow the lead of foreign central banks such as Canada's and start to signal a return to more normal interest rates.
Businesses committed to buying renewable energy, and those with no intention of doing so, all believe their decision will save them money.
That conundrum is one of the standout findings in a survey of leading Australian companies and their approach to renewable energy by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
ARENA, a federal government authority, talked to about 96 of Australia's largest public and private companies and found just under half of them (46) were actively using renewable energy.
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) has accused the Grattan Institute of using flawed analysis about Australians' retirement incomes. It's just the latest example of the superannuation industry preferring its own straw men to some uncomfortable truths.
One uncomfortable truth is that ASFA's measure of a "comfortable" retirement supports an affluent lifestyle more luxurious than most Australians experience during their working lives. It is a better living standard than currently achieved by more than 80 per cent of single retirees, and two in three retired couples. ASFA's standard is misleading because it implies than anyone with less will be "uncomfortable" in retirement.
Another uncomfortable truth for the super lobby is that superannuation is no magic pudding: saving more for retirement inevitably means having less today. The average household can only reach ASFA's "comfortable" benchmark in retirement by being "uncomfortable" beforehand.
Australians need to make up their own minds about the standard of living they aspire to in retirement.
To do so they need information, which is why the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) publishes definitions of a "modest" and "comfortable" living standard for retirees.
A recent article in Sunday Money criticised the "comfortable" living standard, quoting panelists at two Fairfax subscriber events on retirement.
Australia has 200,000 more homes sitting empty than it had a decade ago, new figures show, despite the country grappling with a housing supply shortage that is pushing the cost of a first home beyond many of its residents.
The figures from the 2016 census have been described as "cruel and immoral" by leading UNSW urban policy expert Hal Pawson, who has warned the government must act to stem the growth in unoccupied housing.
"There is gross under-occupation across Australia," Mr Pawson said, adding that there were up to a million homes with three or more extra bedrooms than the owner required.
The Turnbull government's strained relationship with corporate Australia has come under more duress following some heated exchanges between the Prime Minister and the nation's leading chief executives at a private dinner in Sydney on Monday night.
Multiple sources, all speaking on the condition of anonymity, have told The Australian Financial Review that while there was mutual recognition that both sides needed each other and a genuine desire to be constructive, Malcolm Turnbull upbraided the business leaders for not helping out more with donations and generally not being more vocal in advocating the government's agenda.
This invited complaints from the corporate leaders that much of the government's agenda was not friendly to them. One CEO listed as examples the imposition of the bank tax, the implementation of changes to section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act, or an effects test, an ongoing aversion towards substantial industrial relations reform, and even the decision to phase in company tax cuts over 10 years, putting big business last.
The big four banks will need to increase their loss-absorbing financial buffers by billions of dollars under higher capital requirements set by the banking regulator.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority on Wednesday unveiled its long-awaited views on what banks must do to be considered "unquestionably strong," as recommended by the 2014 financial system inquiry.
It said the country's largest lenders would need to increase top tier capital by about 1 percentage point under the new regime to achieve a core equity tier one capital ratio of 10.5 per cent of assets by 2020 at the latest.
The recommendation of the Financial System Inquiry that Australia's major banks should be unquestionably strong was based on the premise that they needed to retain access to offshore funding markets even during a crisis. This is probably still true even though banks are much less reliant now on short-term wholesale funding than they were.
The key point, though, is that offshore markets need to understand the strength of the local banks. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority's paper suggests increasing the level of equity funding of Australian banks will do this. Clearly more capital will help perceptions. The paper then goes through contortions proving to itself that its new rule will make banks unquestionably strong. The contortions are necessary because APRA has a whole series of opaque rules on how banks are managed which it needs to convert into foreign equivalents. Only once these adjustments are made, is it clear how well our banks stack up globally.
Global economic expansions do not die of old age. Outside war or violent energy shocks, they are invariably murdered by central banks fearing inflation.
The fact that the post-Lehman business cycle in the US is already the third longest since the mid-19th century tells us little. The more relevant point is that consumer price growth has been falling relentlessly this year and has dropped to 1.4 per cent.
The US future inflation gauge published by the Economic Cycle Research Institute has also rolled over, and this underlying indicator suggests that it will stay low for a long time. The US has turned Japanese.
It won't take much for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates too far, triggering an economic reversal making indebted students, corporations and other borrowers unable to repay loans, according to billionaire bond manager Bill Gross.
"Central bankers and indeed investors should view additional tightening and 'normalising' of short-term rates with caution," Gross, who runs the $US2.1 billion Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, said in an investment outlook published overnight.
The Fed has hiked its short-term funds rate four times since December 2015, including twice this year. The implied probability of another rate hike in 2017 was about 40 per cent as of late Wednesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The median Fed target rate is 1.375 per cent this year, rising to 2.94 per cent in 2019.
Interest rate are set to rise, not immediately but soon, in the view of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Speaking at the Melbourne Institute economic outlook conference, Mr Turnbull said his reading of statements from the Reserve Bank was that "rates are more likely to go up than down, clearly".
The Bank's cash rate has been 1.5 per cent since August, a record low.
Australians should not read too much into the Reserve Bank board's comments on a "neutral interest rate", deputy governor Guy Debelle says, after the minutes of Tuesday's meeting set markets into a flurry on speculation the central bank would eventually like to raise interest rates to 3.5 per cent.
The cash rate remains at the record low of 1.5 per cent, but the minutes fuelled predictions the next rate rise was likely to be up, sending a warning to thousands of highly indebted Australians who may struggle to meet their mortgage repayments if banks are forced to raise interest rates.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull heeded the call on Thursday, telling the Melbourne Institute that high levels of indebtedness with low levels of interest rates "always pose a risk, particularly if there's an assumption of rising asset prices".
In some ways, the next election is shaping as a battle between head and heart.
Thanks to Bill Shorten's "scene-setter" speech in Melbourne on Friday, voters could face the starkest choice in decades - either to stick with the low-tax, pro-business, growth model despite its underperformance, or junk all that in favour of a strengthened social safety net funded by higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
Amid the torpor bedevilling the global economy, Malcolm Turnbull is searching for a consistent line, declaring himself an "optimist" while warning that household budgets could be further strained, meaning borrowers should be "prudent" about their indebtedness.
Clearly, this sentiment is ill-suited to jolting a flat-lining economy into sudden and care-free effervescence. The personally comfortable Turnbull might call himself an optimist but his government's failure to prevent soaring household electricity prices and now, the threat of higher mortgage rates, will more likely entrench voters as pessimists. It is an incompatibility that favours Labor.
Britain has narrowly edged out Australia's healthcare system to take the coveted top spot in a global study which ranked the quality of healthcare systems based on 72 indicators.
The study, conducted by US think tank The Commonwealth Fund, compared the healthcare systems of 11 high-income countries to measure performance in five key domains: care process, access, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes.
But experts warn a self-congratulatory pat on the back risks overlooking the reality faced by some of Australia's most vulnerable patients.
CANCER sufferers across NSW could miss out on world-class treatments as funding cuts leave hospitals uncertain how they will afford key equipment.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal advisers to Health Minister Greg Hunt and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists held an emergency meeting last week over fears funding changes have cut $70 million from the system.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said he was worried “states and territories may not be able to afford new equipment”.
Medibank chief executive Craig Drummond has called on the $20 billion health insurance industry to work more closely with the federal government to head off an affordability crisis. He plans to further invest in home healthcare services to encourage more people to seek treatment outside the hospital system.
Mr Drummond, 56, used his first anniversary running one of the country's top health insurers to highlight the nation's soaring cost of living which he warned was contributing to the mass exodus of young people from private health insurance policies.
He said the industry must focus on working with the government to reduce healthcare costs, which would result in lower premiums, and said the country relied too heavily on unnecessary hospital treatment compared with other parts of the world.
State governments would reclaim their constitutional powers over income tax and introduce public hospital co-payments to free themselves from the "financial blight" of Medicare, under a think tank's radical plan for federation reform.
Researchers at the libertarian Centre for Independent Studies say that only through sweeping changes to the federation can state governments prevent the cost of public hospitals swamping their budgets in an ageing Australia.
Dr Jeremy Sammut and David Gadiel argue in their new report that the funding gaps around the Gonski school reforms and the National Disability Insurance Scheme pale in comparison to the looming costs of Medicare but states seem to be in denial.
Three days after Choice slammed the private health insurance industry, a month before he's likely to report another fall in customer numbers and a year after promising to tackle "unsustainable" healthcare costs while enjoying a multimillion-dollar salary, Medibank's chief executive appears to be playing the PR game of blame-someone-else-for-your-challenges.
And never mind that Medibank, operating in capitalism's equivalent of a sheltered workshop, with the taxpayer doing most of its work for it, is outrageously profitable despite having the industry's highest number of customer complaints.
Forgive me being a little cynical about the piece on the front page of Monday's Australian Financial Review in which the Medibank boss, former banker Craig Drummond, all but cries for his poor customers – or perhaps former customers – suffering from "the nation's soaring cost of living, which he warned was contributing to the mass exodus of young people from private health insurance policies".
Medibank Private’s share price has had a choppy run in the past few months and the volatility shows no signs of ending soon.
The health insurer’s stock was sold down by 3.7 per cent yesterday after Goldman Sachs slapped a fairly robust sell recommendation on the company.
Medibank stock had been trading above the $3 mark just two months ago and closed last night at $2.79.
Chief executive Craig Drummond has just returned from a tour of the European and US health systems — good coincidental timing with the northern summer — and said Australia was now at a critical juncture.
A critically drug-resistant strain of gonorrhoea dubbed a "super-superbug" has been detected in every Australian state and territory by a new national surveillance system.
The National Alert System for Critical Antimicrobial Resistance (CARAlert) identified 1,064 bacteria highly resistant to last-line antibiotics between 17 March 2016 and 31 March 2017 across 73 laboratories.
"These are super-superbugs," said Professor John Turnidge senior medical advisor at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, which oversees CARAlert.
A bold plan to find savings in the public hospital system by having governments pay a package deal or bundled price for maternity services has been put on hold.
The Independent Hospital Pricing Authority has also warned that the problems identified with bundled pricing will affect similar changes in future.
The Australian revealed last year that the IHPA, a Rudd-era financing agency, was examining whether the next efficiency drive could be in maternity services.
Maternity services were chosen because service volumes and outcomes are relatively predictable and there is huge potential for savings: in 2014-15, more than 220,000 pregnant women were admitted to public hospitals, costing about $1.5 billion to deliver their babies.
The reform committee set up by the Turnbull government to fix private health insurance has found the task of redesigning and categorising tens of thousands of policies harder than expected.
The lack of substantive progress has prompted the former head of the government’s insurance regulation agency to call for a Productivity Commission inquiry into the sector.
After the Coalition made a series of election promises aimed at addressing concerns over the complexity and cost of insurance, the Private Health Ministerial Advisory Committee was tasked with coming up with reforms.
In December 2014, Barry O'Farrell wrote to a group of residents at a retirement village telling them he "remained of the view that a parliamentary inquiry was required" into the multi-billion dollar retirement village sector.
The letter, sent months after he stepped down as Premier of NSW after being "Granged", said the issues and concerns, if not remedied, would affect more people in coming decades given current demographic projections.
He said a parliamentary inquiry was the best vehicle to investigate the sector as it would be public, involve MPs from various parties, under the Parliament's rules, and its recommendations would have to be publicly responded to by the government within three months.
The rise of chronic illness and patients presenting with multiple, serious health problems will force a reimagining of Medicare with a renewed focus on preventative medicine, expert say.
A panel discussing the future of Medicare at the The Australian/Melbourne Institute Economic and Social Outlook Conference has heard payments to doctors and general practitioners in particular need to be reconfigured to reward long-term, preventative approaches to good health and treatment.
Medicare’s current payments system, which pays doctors per service, incentivises doctors to provide short-term treatment of acute issues, the panel said.
London: US President Donald Trump told embattled British Prime Minister Theresa May he won't come to Britain for his controversial state visit until he is sure of getting a "better reception", it has been reported.
Mr Trump was said to have told Mrs May that he had not had "great coverage" in Britain and had urged her to "fix it for me", according to The Sun on Sunday.
It was originally reported last month that Mr Trump had informed Mrs May that he did not want to go ahead with the visit if there were likely to be large-scale protests.
Washington: US President Donald Trump's standing with the American people has deteriorated since the northern spring, buffeted by perceptions of a decline in US leadership abroad, a stalled presidential agenda at home and an unpopular Republican healthcare bill, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Approaching six months in office, Trump's overall approval rating has dropped to 36 per cent from 42 per cent in April.
His disapproval rating has risen five points to 58 per cent. Overall, 48 per cent say they "disapprove strongly" of Trump's performance in office, a level never reached by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and reached only in the second term of George W Bush in Post-ABC polling.
Wall Street's top banker, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon, on Friday ripped into Washington politicians for the persistent legislative gridlock that is "holding us back, and it is hurting the average American".
"It's almost embarrassing being an American citizen . . . and listening to the stupid s--- we have to deal with in this country," he said.
Dimon is dead right.
America has serious problems. The brazenly ideological political class is woefully failing ordinary Americans. It has been for near two decades.
Washington: It's a hell of a gamble when you rely on a sick man. But Senate leader Mitch McConnell had no choice when Arizona Senator John McCain was laid low on Friday, with a blood clot over his eye. McConnell was forced to cancel a Senate vote scheduled for this week on the Republicans' increasingly unpopular makeover of Obamacare.
With two GOP senators committed to voting against the bill, the numbers are thought to be evenly divided – 50 for, 50 against. But there's no guarantee that McCain, when he's back on his feet, will support the bill.
McCain has only been critical of the terms of the makeover and the secretive process by which it was drafted. And his period of recuperation, initially thought to take a week, has been seized on by critics of the new healthcare laws, as an opportunity to browbeat an estimated eight or ten GOP senators who are said to be wobbling.
Washington: Republican efforts to overhaul or repeal Obamacare collapsed in the US Senate on Tuesday, dealing a sharp setback to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party's seven-year quest to kill President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.
As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2017
The disarray in the Republican-controlled Senate rattled financial markets and cast doubt on the chances for getting Mr Trump's other domestic policy priorities, such as tax reform, through a divided Congress.
Washington: US President Donald Trump's extended, rambling new interview with the New York Times provides perhaps the clearest picture yet of his conviction that he is above the law - a conviction, crucially, that appears to be deeply felt on an instinctual level - and of his total lack of any clear conception of the basic obligations to the public he assumed upon taking office.
There are numerous worrisome moments in this interview, from his incoherence on the healthcare debate ("pre-existing conditions are a tough deal") to his odd asides about history (Napoleon "didn't go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death"). But I wanted to highlight the sum total of the picture that results from three things Trump said.
In 1990, George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act, which gave disabled people more freedom to move about society. In 1996, Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform law that tied benefits to work requirements so that recipients would develop the skills they need to succeed in the labor force. In 2003, Republicans passed a law giving Americans a new prescription drug benefit, which used market mechanisms to give them more control over how to use it.
These legislative accomplishments were about using government in positive ways to widen people’s options. They aimed at many of the same goals as Democrats — broader health coverage, lower poverty rates — but relied on less top-down mechanisms to get there. Over the past few decades Republicans cast off the freedom-as-capacity tendency. They became, exclusively, the party of freedom as detachment. They became the Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, the Drain the Swamp Party, the Don’t Tread on Me Party. ----- http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-problem-with-donald-trump-giving-himself-a-pardon-over-mueller-findings-20170721-gxgff2.html
The problem with Donald Trump giving himself a 'pardon' over Mueller findings
James Hohmann
Published: July 22 2017 - 3:18AM
Washington: "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal," Richard Nixon said during a televised interview in 1977. But Nixon understood that he could never pardon himself. President Trump may not.
Four of of the best-sourced journalists in Washington reported on Thursday night that "President Trump's lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president's authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort".
"Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people," Carol Leonnig, Ashley Parker, Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger wrote in The Washington Post reported.
