I don't want to discuss the merits of this decision (I'm hardly qualified to make a judgement on that even if I did know all the facts), but rather I wish to point out that such decisions must be made in any healthcare system. In a user pays system the decision ultimately rests with the user themselves, while in a government run system the government must appoint a body or an individual to make these decisions. (In an insurance driven system such as in the US the conditions on when to make such decisions are established as part of the insurance contract)

Such decisions must be made because "the best healthcare money can buy" would cost the entire economic output of a nation to pay for. No matter how much you do there is always something more that could be done to improve the odds of survival or the comfort of the patient some small amount. As a result there must by rationing, which is where this and similar treat-or-not decisions come in. Someone has to make the decision, and such decisions must take into account budget limitations, or they will simply over-spend now and lack resources for future situations.

In any publish healthcare system people will die as the result of a government employee's decision to limit their treatment (either by cutting it off entirely, or restricting it to only certain procedures). Anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or lying to you (and perhaps to themself). (Note that in an insurance based system like in the US such decisions are still made, the difference being that the conditions for the decision are set as part of a contract rather than either via law or simple ad-hoc)

The fact that so many supporters of public healthcare regularly claim that such things do not happen tells me that they are either liars, or that they don't even realise that such decisions are a necessary evil, which means that they are not even close to qualified to design or run any sort of healthcare system.

Of course none of this gives a pass to the people who deliberately use a very emotionally loaded phrase ("death panels") rather than a simpler, less emotionally charged term, but when it comes to people who use emotionally manipulative phrases versus people who are blatantly lying to you; the ones that are actually telling the the truth come off as a little more trustworthy.

*. "Death panels" is a rather emotionally manipulative name for such things (Adult Guardian is just as bad in the opposite directions though), a better term would be something like "Treatment Decision Panel".

It would be her second transplant after years of drug abuse, including heroin and amphetamines

Dr Hames said the State Government was prepared to pay for her and her father to travel to New Zealand so she could be considered for a "live" liver transplant.

I've got two questions:

One, why can't a "live" liver transplant be done in Australia?

Two, why does the Government need to pay for her to fly to NZ? I get that we as a nation feel the need to provide public hospitals, but I really don't see how we could think the Government is responsible for expenses related to procedures that are not even going to be conducted in Australia. It's not like it would be impossible for her to acquire the needed money from a charity or family members even.

I suspect this happens all the time, and we're only hearing about it in this case because she is a drug addict on her second liver already, but even in non-drug related cases (probably rare; liver failure is normally caused by drug abuse) I don't understand why this is being done by the government. If one of my friends or family where having this sort of problem and couldn't scrounge up the money I would happily loan them the couple of grand this would be at the most, and for people that don't have that option (who would be exceedingly rare) there are personal loans and plenty of charities that would be willing to help them.

--- Edited on 01/03/2010 to improve wording ---

... Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby says the churches want equality in wealth.

"There is no way that you can justify this degree of difference between senior executives' pay and workers' pay," he said.

"Certainly I think that the church needs to speak out. This is a matter that greatly effects the nature of our society."

So as an Australian Christian I've sent them an email expressing my views on this issue:

Hi,

I've noticed that you've come out at least partly in support of government restricting wages for higher paid worker: http://www.acl.org.au/national/browse.stw?article_id=29217 (it's possible that the ABC has misrepresented the ACL's views on this of course, in which case I recommend posting a clarification). I oppose this quite strongly and feel that I should explain why.

There are three problems with supporting this:

1. It's impractical. It won't work in the majority of cases for two reasons: the first is that there will be loopholes, which a smart accountant will be able to get the through, and the second is that we are talking about people dropping from 10-20Mil to 5Mil; these are people who can easily move overseas to countries that don't have such laws, meaning that Australian companies would lose access to a large number of the most highly sought-after executives, harming the Australian economy, potentially quite seriously.

2. Supporting this plan is liable to drive people away from the Church. People get angry when the Church is seen as "interfering" with the government, and this would be seen as the Church interfering with the government by many.

3. There is no Biblical or Moral defense of such a stance that I'm aware of. Truly neither of the others is a good enough reason for the Church to ignore a strong moral issue like say Abortion, but this isn't a moral issue. The nearest thing I'm aware of in the Bible is the rich young ruler who Jesus told to give his money to the poor, but the thing is that Jesus told him to give his OWN money to the poor, not to raise taxes and give that money to the poor, and definitely not to set some maximum "fair" wage for anyone in the area he was the ruler over.

I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on why the Christian church needs to support this proposal.

PS. I'll be posting the text of this email on my own website (http://blog.timp.com.au) as well, and would appreciate being able to post your response there as well.

--
TimP
[http://blog.timp.com.au]

This and the fact that China currently tops my list of "Countries most likely to invade Australia" mean that I'm boycotting Chinese made products. This isn't going to be a complete boycott, I'll still buy Chinese when there's no other option and I'm not going to throw away the stuff I already own that's made in China, but where possible I'll make sure my money is going to someone other than the Chinese (and Indonesia, which is second place on the list, and not exactly a beacon of human rights itself).

-- Edit 19/06/2009 --

Changed the title from "China Sucks" to "China's Government Sucks", which more accurately communicates my opinion.

As an aside the fact that the student unions lost so much funding as well suggests that the majority of students did not find the student unions worthwhile, so why should they be forced to spend money on things they don't find useful?