Is Corporate Corruption Compromising the Quality of Hospital Care in Australia – The Proof is in the Parking.

Everyday the people who make the care that hospitals provide Australians possible drive to work to embark on duties that must be both challenging and at times unpleasant.

The jobs are with out a doubt the most valuable jobs in our society. What could be more important to Australian families than knowing that the highest standard of care is being provided to their loved ones when they are in the care of an Australian Hospital.

Yet, everyday when Australia’s hospital workers are going to work, in some instances they are being forced to pay just to park their car near the hospital they work in. There can be no mistakes that this is not by any circumstance fair and is in fact a concealed tax being levied against people who should be supported in every which way possible.

I often jostle with the virtues of private or commercial oriented health care vs government / universal health care. Like most people I believe in universal health care. However with the Governments long tragic history of undertaking crimes against humanity coupled with the governments role in health care there is cause for concern with the current arrangements in Australia . The solution however is quite simple.

We as society need to know who the benefactors of these parking arrangements are, what lead to such arrangements being made and the contractual histories of such arrangements.

The fact of the matter is that hospitals are paid for by the people, belong to the people and the infrastructure of these institutions should not be run as revenue generators for governments or private corporations.

I am such a believer in this concept that I believe that beyond investigating who the benefactors of these parking arrangements are and what they are doing with the revenues, we should also seriously consider whether having public hospitals branded with Government branding is appropriate. Should they not just be known as the peoples hospitals? Although it is not hard to see how commercial interests could corrupt private health care this same commercial corruption is just as likely to occur within governments. Separating state and care and creating institutions where the hierarchy from top to bottom know they are funded by the people and serve the people would create more opportunities to eliminate commercial bias and corruption from health care.

Let’s ensure that the people responsible for managing the day to day operations of hospitals from Doctor to Nurse to Cleaner have the commercial cards stacked in their favour starting with the very basic service of free car parking which I’m sure that we as society can easily afford to offer them.