The West Australian has revealed that incentive payments for health services have led to unnecessary hospitalisation and there have been allegations in Parliament of 'corrupt' practices.
Save Our Services has been warning for some time that the privatisation of health and other services poses a real risk, not only to access and quality of services but also to the cost to tax-payers. Today's report, based on information uncovered by the State Opposition, has shown that around $1.8 million had to be repaid by the private provider, Health Solutions WA.
By making extra payments for hospitalisations this has created a profit incentive to over-service patients. That means hospital beds filled that cannot be filled by others. It costs the tax-payer money to actually limit services to be public! That's what over-servicing means and that is a product of privatisation .
How can this be sensible?