WHAT is happening to health services in NSW?
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Everywhere you look the State Government is ripping health services apart or privatising them. Are we turning into the USA – where if you get sick and can’t afford health care then you are basically stuffed?
This country deserves better. It’s citizens who have paid taxes for years to have decent hospitals deserve better.
The paramedics are just the latest to feel the sting of an uncaring coalition government, where saving money appears to be the chief motivation of life and government. These dedicated paramedics are now risking misconduct charges by writing slogans on their ambulances to protest changes to their Death and Disability Scheme.
These blokes put their lives on the line everyday to keep us safe and as they say “we have your back - why hasn’t the Baird Government got ours?”
According to the Health Services Union it is a vicious cycle where the premiums for the paramedics scheme are becoming too expensive for the government because so many paramedics are getting injured on the job.
The union argues that if the State Government provided more resources to the paramedics in the first place then there would be less work injuries. It seems like a vicious cycle.
As a result the paramedic’s new death and disability insurance protection has been slashed by 75 per cent.
With one in five paramedics getting injured on the job is it s worrying thought for many of these dedicated paramedics that if they get injured they might not be able to provide for their families under this new scheme.
The community needs to get behind these brave paramedics and tell the government loud and clear that providing inadequate protection for them is not on.
These cuts come on the back of recent announcements to privatise local hospitals and close the Bourke Street Health Service.
Citizens are justly concerned about these cuts. For instance – what is going to happen to the hydrotherapy pool, which the community helped pay for?
They have had enough of these attacks on their health services and they are expressing their opposition to such poor decisions loudly – as witnessed in recent protests out the front of the Bourke Street Health Service and in Belmore Park on the weekend.