President's email update - Tuesday 20 July

The 2010 Federal Election campaign is off and running and your AMA will be working hard to keep health policy a priority for all parties.

To help you keep up with AMA activity during the election campaign, we have created a special AMA website homepage at www.ama.com.au

The homepage will feature policy announcements from the major parties, AMA comment and responses, the latest health stories from SKY News and the ABC, a photo gallery, audio and video links of AMA media interviews, a live Twitter feed, and a President’s blog that will allow you to share your views on health policy and the election.

We want to hear from you. Go to the homepage now and let us know what you think. You can even vote on who you think will win the election.

Yours sincerely

Dr Andrew Pesce
President

This week's Presidents Blog

The AMA has called for health policy to be the top priority in this Federal election. We have supported the push for health reform, but it has to be the right health reform. We have to build on what works and fix what doesn’t.

The Government has invested more than $7 billion of new funding into the health system. We welcome this significant investment but question how and where some of this funding is being directed, with the plan for care for patients with diabetes being a prime example of getting it wrong.

The AMA wants to see more detail of the reforms, we want to see evidence of more hospital beds, we want to see genuine support for family doctors, and we want to see clinician input to public hospital decision-making at the local level. We would prefer a single funder for the health system.

We need to see strong policies and funding for mental health, aged care and Indigenous health.

What do you think? What are your priorities in health for this election?

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