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."

Thursday, October 05, 2017

The Macro View – Health, Financial And Political News Relevant To E-Health And The Health Sector In General.

October 5 , 2017 Edition.
All has turned to custard for Trump as people become aware he played golf rather than sorting out relief for the poor unfortunates of Puerto Rico post Hurricane Maria. This is going to blow up into a big story I suspect. Time will tell. This just as it seemed he was seemingly getting the hang of the job – or at least General Kelly was!
As far as the Trump tax-cuts that hit the news late in the week – ignore – they will be watered down and massively modified before they see the light of day – if ever!

Sadly the US has also had an awful mass shooting in Las Vegas - 59 killed and  500+ injured. I have no words for this sort of lunacy sponsored by the NRA. The one great thing John Howard did was to get Australia away from such nonsense!
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In Australia the energy farce continues and we will all pay for this political nonsense. Parliament is away till mid October and AGL has decided to give the finger to the Government and continue to plan to close Liddell.
Elsewhere the SSM Survey is becoming increasingly ugly and divisive and distracted by all sorts of unrelated issues. Really sad.
Economically the Treasurer is saying we are soon not going to be borrowing to pay for recurrent expenses (health, welfare etc.) and will start to pay off the large pile of debt we seem to have accumulated. Hope it works out!
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Here are a few other things I have noticed.
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Important Articles.

  • Updated Sep 24 2017 at 11:46 AM

Time spent thinking about the next financial crisis is not wasted

by John Authers
We are all prisoners of our own experience. For me and the people of my generation who now tend to make the key decisions in finance and investment, our experience has included several huge financial bubbles and crises in the western world, and an unprecedented range of crises in the emerging world. Does that mean that we spend too much time thinking about potential future crises?
The markets research team at Deutsche, led by Jim Reid, think not. Last week they produced the latest edition of their annual long-term assets survey, and devoted almost all of it to "The Next Financial Crisis".
It is an enormous and excellent piece of research, from which I will try to gloss the most interesting points. First, the era we live in does indeed have more financial crises than those that went before. This is true globally, demonstrated with a welter of statistics, and there is a clear point at which the crises began to accumulate: August 1971, when President Richard Nixon brought the Bretton Woods agreement to an end, ending the tie of the dollar, and ultimately most other currencies, to the price of gold.
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  • Updated Sep 27 2017 at 3:31 AM

Janet Yellen says Fed should be 'wary' of moving too gradually

by Craig Torres and Christopher Condon
Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said raising interest rates gradually is the most appropriate policy stance now at a time of higher uncertainty about inflation.
"It would be imprudent to keep monetary policy on hold until inflation is back to 2 per cent," she said in Cleveland. In addition, she said the Fed "should also be wary of moving too gradually".
US central bankers are monitoring progress on their 2 per cent inflation goal, which they have mostly missed for the past five years. Nonetheless, the Fed's quarterly forecasts released last week continued to show most members projecting one additional rate hike this year and three more in 2018.
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  • Sep 27 2017 at 9:18 AM

Investors should brace for a 'bumpy decade ahead' as rates rise

Janet Yellen, the powerful head of the US Federal Reserve boss, might think that that she's done her bit to discourage the massive levels of speculation in financial markets by preparing investors for a US rate hike in December.
But others - including Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England - predict that the combination of huge debt levels and rising interest rates mean we should brace for a "bumpy decade ahead".
In a speech in Cleveland overnight, Yellen defended the Fed's gradualist approach to raising interest rates by highlighting the dangers of moving too quickly, or too slowly.
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A decade after the global financial crisis, we're still not back to normal

Ross Gittins
Published: September 26 2017 - 10:58PM
Talk about a slow burn. It's 10 years since the beginnings of the global financial crisis, the greatest economic collapse any of us will ever see. Things ought to be back to normal by now, but they aren't.
The world is still picking through the wreckage, deciding what should be kept and what dispensed with. What needs to be done differently to restore normality and ensure there's never another disaster like that one.
A lot of people were surprised the retribution didn't happen at the time: bankers sent to jail, famous economists and their theories discredited, presiding politicians pushed out to pasture, their reputations in tatters.
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RBA says debt-burdened households vulnerable to shocks

Clancy Yeates
Published: September 26 2017 - 12:57PM
Home buyers who stretched themselves to enter the property market while interest rates were at record lows could be "vulnerable" to economic shocks, a senior Reserve Bank official says.
With markets and key forecasters expecting official interest rates will start to rise next year, RBA assistant governor for the financial system Michele Bullock also said the central bank would need to keep a close eye on how rate rises affected households' spending.
Ms Bullock on Tuesday said a key risk that was being watched closely remained the high level of household indebtedness, which was a result of cheap credit and rising house prices.
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Why we're doing stuff, not buying stuff

Michael Pascoe
Published: September 28 2017 - 10:01AM
Pascoe's Law of Stuff states that stuff expands to fill available space. Live in a small unit, it will be full. Live in a big house for a while, it also will be full.
The corollary is that less space means less stuff – as anyone who's downsized knows only too painfully. And what follows from that is, if people can have fewer things, they'll react by spending more on services and experiences.
That's been my theory, supported by observation, speculation and the odd Australian Bureau of Statistics survey, such as those showing our spending on cafes and restaurants is outstripping general retail sales.
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Help me out here. RBA deputy says bank asked to do too much

Peter Martin
Published: September 28 2017 - 7:30PM
The Reserve Bank is being asked to do far too much, its deputy governor Guy Debelle has told a conference in London. From the time it was granted independence in the mid-1990s, it came to be seen as "the only game in town" for economic management, a view that was reinforced as it was forced it to do more and more.
With the rare exception of the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, demand management became to be the sole responsibility of the Australian Reserve Bank and others like it, he told the conference on central bank independence. Government tax and spending decisions were "not much in the mix".
"Given their mandate, as long as there was something that could be done to achieve the goals given to the central banks, however small the impact, then that something had to be done."
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National Budget Issues.

Brisbane off-the-plan unit losses affirm RBA fears

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM September 25, 2017

Rosanne Barrett

Apartments bought off the plan at the start of Brisbane’s unprecedented unit-construction wave are selling at losses of up to 36 per cent, underscoring concerns from the Reserve Bank about the city’s concentrated inner-city market.
Property searches of high-rise apartment towers in Hamilton, Bowen Hills and Fortitude Valley built about five years ago show most sales this year had been at a loss.
The heaviest falls were a $152,000 plunge from an original price of $522,000 for a Hamilton two-bedroom unit with river views; a $150,000 decline on a smaller two-bedroom unit in the same complex; and a $145,000 loss on a $400,000, 60sq m unit in Bowen Hills.
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How 'bomb kit' delivery changed thinking about Australian border security

David Wroe
Published: September 24 2017 - 11:45PM
The recent case of a terrorist bomb kit allegedly being airmailed from Turkey to Sydney was a "game-changer", prompting a major rethink of border security that is looking at more screening of cargo offshore, a top official has said.
It can also be revealed that the government is working with cutting-edge artificial intelligence and big-data researchers to streamline the movement of passengers, parcels and mail into Australia and better predict incoming threats.
Michael Outram, acting Commissioner of the Australian Border Force, told Fairfax Media that the Sydney case had underscored the need for Australian agencies to co-operate to gather more information about packages before they arrive.
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How Australia can play a role in the 'second space age'

John McDuling
Published: September 25 2017 - 5:36AM
Elon Musk, the most hyped entrepreneur in the world right now, is scheduled to touch down again in Australia this week.
The South African-born billionaire is due to speak at the International Astronautical Congress, being hosted in Adelaide.
Musk is best known for his electric vehicle and energy company Tesla, which won a lucrative contract earlier this year from the South Australian government to supply the world's biggest lithium-ion battery.
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Everyone has a different excuse for the electricity stuff-up

Ross Gittins
Published: September 25 2017 - 12:15AM
The electricity market is such a mare's nest of stuff-ups and problems it's impossible to see the deeply divided Turnbull government making much progress in fixing it.
The goals of halting runaway power prices and reducing the risk of summer blackouts wouldn't be quite so daunting, for instance, were it not for the third goal of "sustainability" – the euphemism you use when you can't say "climate change".
It's tempting to focus on the first two and forget the third, but even that wouldn't work because the inescapable reality of climate change means that, until the Turnbull government ends the "policy uncertainty" about its treatment of fossil fuels relative to renewables, it's unlikely to get sufficient investment in new production capacity to keep prices controlled.
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Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch

Mark Kenny
Published: September 24 2017 - 11:45PM
Australia will fall short of its Paris carbon reduction targets signed under Tony Abbott unless it lifts its renewable energy production to levels higher even than Labor's plan for 50 per cent green energy reliance by 2030.
The first assessment by the Australia Institute's new Climate and Energy Program, to be released on Monday, has found that unless a higher burden is placed on the more expensive process of carbon reductions in other sectors – agriculture, transport and manufacturing – then the electricity generation sector will need to aim for a renewable energy target of at least 66 per cent by 2030, and possibly as high as 75 per cent.
That is, a power generation sector where the fossil fuel component is reduced to perhaps a quarter of the size it is now.
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Reserve Bank warns how Australia can avoid another global financial crisis

Jessica Irvine
Published: September 24 2017 - 11:43PM
On September 16, 2008 Australians woke to extraordinary television footage of events overnight in New York.
Outside the towering offices of investment bank Lehman Brothers, bewildered looking bankers spilled onto the street, clutching archive boxes hastily-filled with personal effects, including framed portraits of families they now found themselves liberated to spend a whole lot more time with.
As shocking as the collapse of Lehman Brothers was, however, it was just the most dramatic development in a financial crisis which had been gathering speed for more than a year.
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No easy answers as the world's second biggest gas exporter prepares to run short

Peter Martin
Published: September 26 2017 - 5:48AM
Surely the world's second biggest exporter isn't about to run short of gas?
We are, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, although not for the reasons that are widely believed.
The conventional wisdom has been that when three big exporters opened six big liquefaction plants at Gladstone in Queensland and locked themselves into long-term supply contracts with Japan that they couldn't fulfil they had to commandeer gas that the rest of us would have used.
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Federal government announces final budget deficit has dropped to $33.2 billion

TREASURER Scott Morrison has said the Federal Budget is $4.4 billion better off, as the government slashed spending on social services.
Claire Bickers
News Corp Australia Network September 26, 201711:25am
TREASURER Scott Morrison has revealed Australia’s federal budget is $4.4 billion better off than forecast five months ago.
Australia’s final budget deficit for the 2016-17 financial year was $33.2 billion, down more than $4 billion from the $37.6 billion outlined in the May budget.
Federal government spending on social services, border control and the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been lower than expected.
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High house prices make a mockery of the bank lending crackdown

  • The Australian
  • 6:00PM September 26, 2017

James Kirby

If you want hard evidence that our property market has decoupled from reality perhaps this is all you need to hear: NAB has decided to introduce new rules about how much it will lend home buyers — the details emerged in recent days when the bank let it be known it will not allow new customers to borrow more than eight times their annual income.
Eight times income! What on earth? This is supposed to be NAB responding to concerns about household debt getting out of hand.
The average income is about $80,000 — the average house price is about $640,000 so the bank has to get a ratio that allows the average earner buy a house, so it comes up with a maximum of eight times income.
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Malcolm Turnbull's 'innovation' agenda lashed by Auditor-General

Stephanie Peatling
Published: September 28 2017 - 9:58AM
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's $1.1 billion flagship innovation agenda was poorly designed and lacked evidence to support its claims about economic growth, a scathing report from the Auditor-General has found.
Auditor-General Grant Hehir has criticised the policy's foundations, and attacked the quality of advice from the public service that underpinned the policy, which was announced in December 2015 – less than three months after Mr Turnbull became Prime Minister.
In a report that reads as if it could be a script for the ABC television public service satire Utopia, the Auditor-General said: "The policy logic that can be inferred from this model is that: if the proposed actions are taken, they will reduce the barriers, which will move Australia towards the vision, which in turn will help achieve the objective of increasing productivity and diversifying the economy".
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Audit exposes NISA as ‘innovation-lite’, Labor says

  • The Australian
  • 3:05PM September 28, 2017

Primrose Riordan

Labor has seized on an audit report which cast doubt over the impact and planning of the government’s innovation package, saying it exposed the program as “innovation-lite”.
The report by the Australian National Audit Office found there is no way to know whether the National Innovation and Science Agenda has had any economic impact and raised concerns about the amount of evidence presented to support some of the measures.
In a joint statement Labor’s industry spokesman Kim Carr, digital economy spokesman Ed Husic and innovation spokeswoman Deborah O’Neill said the plan was just an “election ploy”.
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Middle-income earners bear brunt of slump

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM September 29, 2017

Simon Benson

Middle-income earners are bearing the brunt of a decade-long wage growth slump while workers on lower wages are weathering the storm through the tax-and-transfer welfare system, according to a Treasury report that debunks the myth of rising income inequality since the ­global financial crisis.
The first study of its kind into the underlying causes of the rec­ord low wage growth cycle, which the Reserve Bank saw as perplexing in a May analysis, has revealed a nationwide problem infecting every sector and hitting almost every worker.
Real wage increases over the past five years, taking into account the cost of living, have averaged half of what they did in the preceding decade, while fewer than 10 per cent of workers have experienced wage growth of 4 per cent or more — the lowest level since 2000 when the figure was 40 per cent. The percentage has been declining since.
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Job vacancies surge. It's raining vacant jobs.

Peter Martin
Published: September 28 2017 - 8:34PM
It's easier to find a job than it has been in years.
The latest count from the Bureau of Statistics shows there were 208,400 vacant jobs in August, the most on record. With 714,000 Australians out of work, it means there were just 3.4 unemployed for each vacancy in August, the best odds since 2012.
The number of vacant jobs has jumped from 179,700 to 208,400 in the space of a year. Two years ago, when there were only 152,600 vacant jobs, the unemployed to vacancy ratio was 5.5.
Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said the news was in line with other data showing stronger growth across the economy, particularly in full-time employment.
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How to ensure Australia thrives when the robots come

Peter Hartcher
Published: September 30 2017 - 12:05AM
We are in a moment between techno-rapture and techno-panic. For the last couple of decades we were in such reverential awe of the new technology firms that we allowed them to do as they pleased. Big Tech - Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter - could do no wrong.
Our state of techo-rapture allowed them to get busy doing and enabling things that no one else was allowed: the plundering of our personal data, the exploitation of our intellectual property, the avoidance of our tax laws. They provided platforms that allowed Islamic State to organise attacks on our societies and recruit new terrorists from our suburbs. They stood by as hostile governments used their systems to undermine our democracies.
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How Australia blew its future gas supplies

Tony Wright
Published: September 30 2017 - 12:15AM
No one went hungry at our place.
My father killed our meat, grew our vegetables and was a champion at bartering. A leg of lamb was worth a tub of crayfish to fishermen down the coast. My mother always had chooks, and there were warm eggs collected every morning.
The old boy would snort at the idea of selling a paddock of sheep or cattle without first selecting a fat lamb or a fine steer for the table and the freezer. When Mum took eggs to market, there were plenty put aside for our frypan.
It doesn't bear contemplating, now they're gone, what they might have thought about a country that allowed its entire store of gas to be flogged off without first setting aside enough of the stuff to ensure the nation's power grid continued humming and that consumers could afford to turn on a light switch.
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Health Budget Issues.

Govt hopes to secure private health package

Updated: 11:35 am, Sunday, 24 September 2017
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt hopes to secure a private health insurance affordability package by the end of this year.
Mr Hunt has been in talks to bring down costs with Australian and international device or implant firms, as well as private health insurers.
'I think we are extremely close to genuine agreements that will reduce the pressure on the both devices but overall on the viability of private health insurance,' Mr Hunt told Sky News on Sunday.
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Care before costs: Our aged deserve better

Published: September 24 2017 - 12:05AM
Countless people in aged care are being harmed through neglect born of profit-driven cost-cutting and a failure to properly regulate an industry trusted by some of the most vulnerable people and their families.
We should all be alarmed by evidence of systemic and structural deficiencies, and shocking examples of the consequent suffering and trauma, set out in Fairfax Media's extensive investigation by Michael Bachelard. The four-day series of articles and data show reform is urgently needed to protect the almost 200,000 already in aged care, half of whom have dementia, and to meet the looming demographic surge in the need for end-of-life support. Medical advances have created historic increases in life expectancy, and millions of Australians will soon become unable to live without support available around the clock. Their quality of life is determined by the quality of their care.
The primary problem is an insufficient number of proficient professional staff, particularly nurses. This is discouraging for the many dedicated and decent staff in the industry. Evident flaws include lack of training, lack of expertise and poor English skills. So, an evident reform is to improve the quality and quantity of staff. There is no legally required minimum ratio of staff to residents, no minimum training standards, and no mandatory requirement to have a nurse on duty at all times. There is merely an unenforceable rule that staff numbers should be "adequate".
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Is this how it ends?: How we can make aged care better

Michael Bachelard
Published: September 26 2017 - 9:15AM
Lucy O'Flaherty insists that the village her organisation plans to build for people suffering dementia is nothing like the fake town depicted in the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
Korongee, due to open in two years in a suburb in Hobart's north, has been designed specially as a safe place for dementia patients, to give them the feeling they are living in a "real" village.
"But this is not about creating a simulated life," O'Flaherty says. "It's about letting people with dementia do what they want to do, when they want to do it, in a safe environment."
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Half doubt their health cover is worth it

Half of those with health cover surveyed in new polling agree health insurance isn't worth the money you pay for it.
Source:  AAP 26 September, 2017
More than half of those surveyed in new polling don't think their health insurance is worth the money they pay for it.
Overall, 60 per cent in the Essential poll agreed with the claim that health insurance wasn't worth it, but when broken down to the group who have cover the result was 53 per cent.
Nearly 70 per cent who have never had insurance also agree it isn't worth the cost.
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Complications, wait times and necessary surgeries: where NSW was outclassed by other health systems, BHI report shows

Kate Aubusson
Published: September 27 2017 - 12:15AM
Patients in NSW public hospitals have higher rates of complications and longer wait times for some of the most common surgeries compared to comparative health systems internationally, a new independent analysis shows.
Australia's most populous state outperformed its international peers on a range of health system measures, but fell down when it came to adverse events, readmissions as well as inappropriate or delayed surgeries, according to the Bureau of Health Information's 'Healthcare in Focus' report.
NSW was the worst among eight comparator countries for hip fracture surgeries performed on time, with more than one in four patients waiting more than two days for their operations. 
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Australian drug induced deaths at highest rate since late 1990s

AUSTRALIA has recorded its highest number of drug-related deaths since the late 1990s, driven by the meth epidemic, but also the misuse of prescription medicines.
Claire Bickers
News Corp Australia Network September 27, 201712:45pm
DRUG related deaths have reached alarming rates in Australia, with the nation recording its highest number in 20 years.
Prescription drugs caused the highest numbers of drug induced deaths last year, but Australia has also seen a rapid increase in the number of people dying from methamphetamine overdoses.
There were 1808 drug induced deaths registered in Australia in 2016, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today.
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Dementia biggest killer of Aussie women

Dementia has become the leading cause of death for Australian women while drug deaths have hit a 20-year high, a new snapshot on mortality shows.
Megan Neil and Tracey Ferrier
Australian Associated Press September 27, 20176:03pm
Australian drug deaths have reached their highest level since the height of the 1990s heroin epidemic while dementia has become the biggest killer of Aussie women.
Heart disease has long been the nation's number one killer but as its death rate continues to decline, and Australians live longer, the number of people dying from dementia is increasing.
More than one-third of the 158,504 deaths in Australia in 2016 were due to the usual top five leading causes; heart disease, dementia, strokes, lung cancers and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
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Healthcare faces disruption: Primary Health Care CEO Parmenter

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM September 28, 2017

Sarah-Jane Tasker

The head of one of Australia’s top healthcare companies has warned the sector is facing disruption, with technology and access to data set to drive increased consumer choice.
Primary Health Care’s new chief executive, Malcolm Parmenter, said more could be done to improve consumer experience in healthcare and a key driver of that was competition.
Dr Parmenter, who is three weeks into the top job, said consumers knew what constituted a good experience and already had access to technology to determine that in other areas of service, such as banking and supermarkets.
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How I claim back every cent of my health premiums as payouts

Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon
Published: September 27 2017 - 12:15AM
My health fund – which I love – hates me. This is because I'm among a presumably small group of Australians who routinely claim back every cent of their premiums as payouts. That's even though those premiums have increased by an average 55 per cent over the past 10 years.
Part of the secret is needing a lot of treatment: to keep pain and injuries at bay, my scoliosis requires a hectic regime of exercise physiology, osteotherapy and myotherapy.
Readers whose medical circumstances also crank their extras usage will be nodding knowingly. And developing a treatment-intensive condition yourself would put you in the same – let's not call it happy, but at least subsidised – position. Without serving waiting periods if cover is already in place.

1400 drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to get cheaper from October 1

Eryk Bagshaw
Published: September 30 2017 - 3:36PM
Australians battling breast cancer, Parkinson's disease and psoriasis will save hundreds of dollars a year on medicine as a wave of 1400 drugs become eligible for extra subsidies under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme from Sunday. 
But the biggest benefits are set to go to up to 285,000 Australians with schizophrenia who will get access to a drug that costs $1700 for $38. 
From October 1, REXULTI, an antipsychotic tablet, will become one of only a handful of mental illness medications to be added to the scheme. The structure of the program means that for concession card holders it will only cost $6.30. 
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International Issues.

Trump administration adds countries to travel ban list

Devlin Barrett
Published: September 25 2017 - 10:28AM
​The Trump administration announced new restrictions on visitors from eight countries - an expansion of the pre-existing travel ban that has spurred fierce legal debates over security, immigration and discrimination.
Officials had said they wanted the new rules to be both tough and targeted. The move comes as the key portion of President Donald Trump's travel ban, which bars the issuance of visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries, is set to expire.
"These restrictions are necessary and conditions-based, not time-based," a senior administration official said.
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Donald Trump demands NFL teams 'fire or suspend' players as solidarity spreads

Abby Phillip
Published: September 25 2017 - 6:41AM
US President Donald Trump's continued demands on Sunday that NFL owners fire or suspend players who kneel during the national anthem were met with defiance as teams and players knelt and locked arms in solidarity.
More than 100 players across the country on Sunday knelt during the national anthem or remained sitting in their locker rooms in protest. Most teams in the early afternoon games locked arms in solidarity, with at least three team owners joining their players.
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Election gives Germany's far right what it has sought: national legitimacy

Rick Noack
Published: September 25 2017 - 5:28AM
Berlin: In a country that kept the far-right restricted to the political sidelines for more than half a century, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) marked a watershed moment on Sunday, according to first projections which showed the party winning more than 13 per cent of the vote.
The AfD won't be in a position to drive a legislative agenda, but Sunday's vote will likely provide it with something the far-right had so far always been denied: parliamentary legitimacy on a national level.
"Once a party gains access to parliament, chances become much lower that it will simply disappear again," said Tarik Abou-Chadi, a comparative politics researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin. "The election could remove the social stigma which has hampered other far-right parties in the past."
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Think Donald Trump is dividing America? You're not alone

Philip Bump
Published: September 25 2017 - 6:34AM
President Donald Trump's weekend commentary on protests in the NFL was unsurprising in some respects. It's certainly unusual for a president to weigh in repeatedly on what's happening in professional sports, but we've come to expect the unusual from Trump.
It was also unsurprising that Trump injected himself into a fraught political subject, standing firmly in opposition to those players who choose to kneel during the national anthem as an expression of their concern about racial divides in the country. Trump's language was unequivocal in a way that he hasn't been in response to other protests - such as those in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month.
Washington Post-ABC polling released Sunday suggests that, even before Trump inserted himself into the NFL protests, most Americans viewed him as a president who was doing more to divide the country than to unite it.
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North Korea accuses US of declaring war, threatens countermeasures

Published: September 26 2017 - 6:40AM
North Korea's foreign minister has accused President Donald Trump of declaring war on North Korea, saying that Pyongyang reserves the right to take countermeasures including shooting down US strategic bombers even if they are not in the country's air space.
"The whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country," Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters in New York on Monday, local time.
"Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country."
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North Korea v Donald Trump war of words: a most dangerous game

Paul McGeough
Published: September 26 2017 - 9:35AM
The dogs are barking – mad. 
North Korea emerged from Donald Trump's weekend twitterstorm, with a Monday threat of its own. Pyongyang said it was ready to shoot down US military aircraft, even before they might enter its airspace.
It's scary stuff. 
As these guys hurl insults and abuse at each other the lives of millions and the fate of nations are at stake, and the region and the world can't be sure how serious they are.
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Donald Trump's and Republicans' inability to scrap and replace Obamacare a failure of both

Paul McGeough
Published: September 27 2017 - 4:15PM
For days, Donald Trump has been banging on about footballers "taking a knee" - their kneeling protests at social injustice in the US.
But, on Tuesday, Trump took one in the groin as his promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare was torched in yet another social injustice protest - this time by a courageous few among his own Republican Senate colleagues. 
The Republican Party took a hit, exposed as more of a rabble as its last effort to "repeal and replace" died an ignominious death in broad daylight, with all of America looking on.
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  • Updated Sep 28 2017 at 7:19 AM

Donald Trump unveils huge tax cuts in far-reaching fiscal overhaul

US President Donald Trump and senior Republicans have settled on a bold and expensive tax cut plan to boost America's international competitiveness, which aims to slash the corporate rate to 20 per cent, offer full deductibility of business investment and eliminate the taxation of foreign profits.
The ultimate success or failure of the fiscal overhaul will be closely watched by business tax reform advocates in Australia and around the world, to see if America ups the competitive ante for attracting global capital and puts pressure on Australia to adopt the Turnbull government's proposed 25 per cent corporate rate, a cut from the current 30 per cent rate for big business.
Mr Trump today unveiled the ambitious tax "framework" for businesses and individuals as the White House faces a fierce political battle to convince Congress to pass the economic overhaul so the President can clinch a rare legislative victory.
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Trump's tax plan to result in 'little-to-no taxes' from multinationals

Nassim Khadem
Published: September 29 2017 - 12:15AM
Australia's top corporates and their advisers say companies are more likely to base future projects offshore thanks to Donald Trump's plans to slash the US company tax rate as well as end taxes on foreign profits of US-based multinationals.
And while big business in America has largely thrown its support behind Trump's tax reform plan, a number of Washington-based lobby groups have warned the changes make it easier for multinational corporations to pay little-to-no taxes on all profits that they book offshore.
Mr Trump has proposed cutting the US corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 20 per cent. His plan, which is still scant on detail and has no explanation of how it will be funded, will also give a one-time "tax holiday" to companies such as Apple and Microsoft to return overseas funds to the US. But as yet,Mr Trump hasn't specified what the one-off reduced corporate tax rate would be.
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North Korea war a real possibility, says RUSI

  • Catherine Philp
  • The Times
  • 11:00AM September 29, 2017
The US cannot launch a preventive strike on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities without provoking a wider war that would leave hundreds of thousands of people dead, Britain’s leading defence think tank said yesterday.
War with North Korea is “now a real possibility”, the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) warned in a report on the crisis prompted by the Kim regime’s rapid advances in nuclear missile technology. “If this war is launched, it will not be surgical or short,” it said.
Either side could trigger conflict but there are growing indications that the Trump administration is unwilling to live with a nuclear North Korea armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.
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Donald Trump’s faith in magic pudding economics

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM September 29, 2017

Adam Creighton

Donald Trump’s courageous tax plan could be the last hurrah of the baby-boomers, delivering a remarkable windfall to the richest generation in history courtesy of a massive debt burden for the next generation.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to like about the Trump plan — a nine-page sketch of what the White House hopes US congress will pass in coming months, released earlier this week.
But slashing US taxes by about $US2.2 trillion ($2.8 trillion) over a decade (one estimate of the net impact of the proposals on the US budget) without cutting spending will only push the US government further down the path to fiscal oblivion, a problem boomers won’t have to worry about.
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China's National Congress prepares to shuffle the deck in second-largest economy

Kirsty Needham
Published: September 30 2017 - 12:15AM
Twice a decade, the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party meet. It is political theatre on a grand scale.
Around 2000 delegates gather at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and by week's end, China's new power elite will be unveiled. Seven men will walk out on stage on the red carpet, before hundreds of cameras.
It will be the Chinese public's, and the world's, first glimpse of the new Politburo Standing Committee – the Chinese government's cabinet under president Xi Jinping.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.

This Has Implications For All Who Hold Sensitive Personal Information. GPs And Specialists Take Note.

This appeared last week:

Privacy Commissioner publishes data breach notification guidelines for comment

The Office of the Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner has published draft resources for the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, asking for public comment.
By Asha McLean | September 29, 2017 -- 04:18 GMT (14:18 AEST) | Topic: Security
The Office of the Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner (OAIC) is seeking public comment on draft resources it has published relating to Australia's impending data breach notification laws.
The draft resources include guidelines on how to prepare an eligible data breach statement for when the scheme takes effect on February 22, 2017 (Actually 2018), how to assess a suspected breach, what quantifies reporting, how to notify the OAIC of an incident, and exceptions under the legislated obligations.
The new laws mandated under the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act require organisations covered by the Australian Privacy Act 1988 to notify any individuals likely to be at risk of serious harm by a data breach.
This notice must include recommendations about the steps that individuals should take in response to the data breach, the OAIC explains in its draft material. Australian Information Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim must also be notified.
"Organisations will need to be prepared to conduct quick assessments of suspected data breaches to determine if they are likely to result in serious harm," the OAIC said.
A data breach worthy of reporting is defined by the OAIC as one that is likely to result in serious harm to any of the individuals to whom the information relates, noting also that a data breach occurs when personal information held by an organisation is lost or subjected to unauthorised access or disclosure.
Examples offered by the commissioner include a device containing customers' personal information that is lost or stolen, a database containing personal information that is "hacked", or where personal information is mistakenly provided to the wrong person.
As part of its reference material package, the OAIC prepared a guide to securing personal information, which also urges organisations to prepare or update their data breach response plan to ensure that they are able to respond quickly to suspected data breaches.
As not all data breaches are notifiable -- the scheme only requires organisations to notify when there is a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm to any individual to whom the information relates -- the OAIC explains that exceptions to the scheme will apply for some data breaches, meaning that notification to individuals or to the commissioner may not be required. The OAIC has asked for comment on its draft exceptions information.
There are lots more details here:
Relevant organisations should note the draft guidelines and make sure that when they are finalised steps are taken to ensure compliance. February 2018 is not all that far away!
David.

Wednesday, October 04, 2017

I Wonder How This Saga In The NT Will Play Out. There Have Been Some Good Things Happen There In The Past!

To the shock of many this appeared last week.

Northern Territory Police Special References Unit investigating Health Department matter

MATT GARRICK, NT News
September 25, 2017 12:30am
A CASE involving the Health Department’s chief information officer has been referred to the police, the NT News can reveal.
Stephen Moo resigned this month, with secrecy surrounding the circumstances of his abrupt departure.
Mr Moo, a career public servant, was in charge of overseeing of a major new $259 million IT rollout.
Public sector media teams were tight-lipped on the reasons behind Mr Moo’s departure, although an NT Police spokesperson revealed a matter had been referred to police.
“The Northern Territory Police Special References Unit has received a referral from the Department of Health,” the spokesperson said.
“That referral is subject to assessment and no further information is available now.”
Mr Moo has not been charged. The NT Police Special References Unit investigates sensitive political matters including conflicts of interest and corruption.
The unit has previously investigated such matters as Country Liberal Party slush fund Foundation 51 and convicted travel agent fraudster Xana Kamitsis.
Despite inquiries from the NT News, the Health Department would not reveal the reasons for referring the matter to police, or when it was referred.
“Employment matters are a private matter between the individual and department, as such it is not appropriate to comment,” a spokesman said.
“As the matter has been referred to police, we are unable to provide further comment.”
The department said Mr Moo’s resignation would not affect the timeline of the rollout of the department’s IT overhaul.
In 2003, Mr Moo was cleared in a Justice Department inquiry into breaching the Territory’s public sector code of conduct relating to conflicts of interest.
More here:
There was also coverage here:

Matter involving former NT health CIO referred to police

NT Department of Health confirms CIO’s departure
Rohan Pearce (Computerworld) 27 September, 2017 09:13
The NT Police has confirmed that it is assessing a matter that involves the former chief information officer of the Northern Territory Department of Health, Stephen Moo.
“The Northern Territory Police have received a referral from the Department of Health,” a police spokesperson told Computerworld.
“That referral is currently subject to assessment and no further information is available at this time.”
“Mr Moo has resigned his position with the Department of Health, this has ceased his association with the Department,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health said.
The NT News earlier this week revealed Moo’s departure from the department and the police referral. Moo has not been charged, the newspaper reported.
A biography of Moo previously posted by the Australian Digital Health Agency states that he has “been employed in the health sector for over 34 years, with the last 16 years having direct responsibility for the design, development, implementation and on-going systems management for major corporate client and clinical information systems, and information communications and infrastructure.”
“Stephen has overseen the Northern Territory’s eHealth program for the past 11 years and is the principal architect and sponsor for the development and implementation of a comprehensive eHealth program that is widely regarded as one of the most advanced of its kind in Australia,” the website stated.
More here:
With the recent award of a large ($200M +) contract to InterSystems there has been suspicion all this was about this contract but this seems not to be the case at present.
The bottom line here is that Mr Moo has led some good initiatives in the NT and until the full details are known for certain there should be no speculation. Whatever it is, the truth will out in time! We should just watch and wait....
David.

The NEJM Hits A Six With A Great Article On Medicine And AI. Deeply Important Stuff To Me!

This appeared last week:

Lost in Thought — The Limits of the Human Mind and the Future of Medicine

Ziad Obermeyer, M.D., and Thomas H. Lee, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2017; 377:1209-1211 September 28, 2017
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1705348
In the good old days, clinicians thought in groups; “rounding,” whether on the wards or in the radiology reading room, was a chance for colleagues to work together on problems too difficult for any single mind to solve.
Today, thinking looks very different: we do it alone, bathed in the blue light of computer screens.
Our knee-jerk reaction is to blame the computer, but the roots of this shift run far deeper. Medical thinking has become vastly more complex, mirroring changes in our patients, our health care system, and medical science. The complexity of medicine now exceeds the capacity of the human mind.
Computers, far from being the problem, are the solution. But using them to manage the complexity of 21st-century medicine will require fundamental changes in the way we think about thinking and in the structure of medical education and research.
It’s ironic that just when clinicians feel that there’s no time in their daily routines for thinking, the need for deep thinking is more urgent than ever. Medical knowledge is expanding rapidly, with a widening array of therapies and diagnostics fueled by advances in immunology, genetics, and systems biology. Patients are older, with more coexisting illnesses and more medications. They see more specialists and undergo more diagnostic testing, which leads to exponential accumulation of electronic health record (EHR) data. Every patient is now a “big data” challenge, with vast amounts of information on past trajectories and current states.
All this information strains our collective ability to think. Medical decision making has become maddeningly complex. Patients and clinicians want simple answers, but we know little about whom to refer for BRCA testing or whom to treat with PCSK9 inhibitors. Common processes that were once straightforward — ruling out pulmonary embolism or managing new atrial fibrillation — now require numerous decisions.
So, it’s not surprising that we get many of these decisions wrong. Most tests come back negative, yet misdiagnosis remains common.1 Patients seeking emergency care are often admitted to the hospital unnecessarily, yet many also die suddenly soon after being sent home.2 Overall, we provide far less benefit to our patients than we hope. These failures contribute to deep dissatisfaction and burnout among doctors and threaten the health care system’s financial sustainability.
If a root cause of our challenges is complexity, the solutions are unlikely to be simple. Asking doctors to work harder or get smarter won’t help. Calls to reduce “unnecessary” care fall flat: we all know how difficult it’s become to identify what care is necessary. Changing incentives is an appealing lever for policymakers, but that alone will not make decisions any easier: we can reward physicians for delivering less care, but the end result may simply be less care, not better care.
The first step toward a solution is acknowledging the profound mismatch between the human mind’s abilities and medicine’s complexity. Long ago, we realized that our inborn sensorium was inadequate for scrutinizing the body’s inner workings — hence, we developed microscopes, stethoscopes, electrocardiograms, and radiographs. Will our inborn cognition alone solve the mysteries of health and disease in a new century? The state of our health care system offers little reason for optimism.
But there is hope. The same computers that today torment us with never-ending checkboxes and forms will tomorrow be able to process and synthesize medical data in ways we could never do ourselves. Already, there are indications that data science can help us with critical problems.
Lots more here – and freely available at present:
To me this article makes some great points about how we will see medicine evolve to address increasing complexity and allow practitioners to continue both to function well and be invaluable to the care process. Implementation is all and in this case it will be very difficult to bring off well I believe.
Wishful thinking? I hope not. A must read.
David.