Medicare Nightmare

For decades, public discourse on the Australian health system has been reduced to focusing on limited issues such as e-health or budget cuts while failing to capture the greatest challenge facing our national healthcare system. That is, inefficient access to crucial information that empowers patients and their carers to make more effective health decisions and maximise patient outcomes, leading to the dilemma and tragedy of ‘the Medicare Nightmare.’ This nightmare is not just a personal nightmare but a national one as well, considering poor medical information flow in our healthcare system and society results in increasing medical errors, escalating medical costs and an overburdened health system, impacting on the sustainability of our valued Medicare scheme. Complicated access to essential medical information is also linked to the oppression of women, disempowerment of health consumers and the general failure of our education system at all levels to empower individuals to make more informed decisions on the most important asset they will ever possess- their health.

Incorporating case study analysis, this book tackles how such poor information flow occurs, allowing all key stakeholders in the healthcare system to take more responsibility for not just their personal health and wealth but that of their nation too. It is only through creating more public awareness in our society on the great Medicare Nightmare that we can increase our chances of alleviating the personal suffering and loss incurred by its unfortunate victims and reveal the hidden impact and costs these nightmares collectively have had on our society.

Written by a Science/Academic Literacy teacher with an educational background in Medical Science, Business and Education, this book is a must-read for anyone who has any contact with the Australian health system. An established curricular justice author, Dal Ouba also has extensive experience in developing quality educational materials, both in the secondary and tertiary education sectors and has offered this unique resource that promises to change public discourse on our health system forever.