Dear Senator Nash: Ahead of the vote regarding proposed changes to Medicare I ask that you vote against the proposed changes. As a parent of three children, and having worked my entire adult life, it is very important to our family and for our nation for a number of reasons:
1. Medicare keeps universal healthcare at a very low level of total expenditure on national health as a proportion of total GDP. Everyone is already paying for healthcare through the levy. This is more egalitarian than penalising those who get sick.
2. Illness can strike at different times and a family may look economically fine on paper but still be in a crisis. In my own case, when I was a high school student, my mother developed terminal cancer. Having worked her whole life my mother owned her home but we lost our sole source of income, and she was forced onto a sickness benefit whilst she received treatment. An operation at Sydney Hospital saved her life. There were times when there was no food and I was unaccustomed to charity and unaware of my options for help. I was able to complete high school on Austudy and then went on to university and have worked my entire adult life.
3. Now having lived and worked in the US where people live in constant fear of medical bills, this is not a path we want to go down. The US is not a healthcare model I want to emulate. The total proportion of GDP spent on health is much higher and the inequitable distribution of healthcare is horrible to see in a country with so much wealth.
We have a Medicare system which works remarkably well. Please keep it intact.
Tani Shaw, Ocean Shores
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