GV Health warrants our celebratory recognition

Institutions are greater, or lesser than the sum of their parts.

Evidence of that abounds and that can be found in the positive sense at Shepparton’s GV Health.

Works worth nearly $170 million to improve
Shepparton's Goulburn Valley Health has already started.

An institution is nought more than a collection of buildings and whatever appliances or fittings it’s particular pursuit demands, but it’s the people who populate the institution, those who work there, who make it either “greater” or “lesser”.

A recent visit to GV Health for a day procedure gave me ample time, and certainly, a practical opportunity, to make a judgment - it was friendly, professional and efficient, putting the sword to any belief that public patients are afforded a lesser quality of care than privately insured counterparts.

Of course, emerging from the experience with a good report immediately enhances such life events, but had the outcome been somewhat different, it would have been worse than mischievous not to acknowledge the kindness and friendliness of all.

The Shepparton hospital is most certainly a complex collection of parts and work has already started on a $169 million refresh of the institution that will make it even more labyrinth-like but at the same time a more efficient workplace.

Health care and its associated social assistance is Shepparton’s largest employer and with the broad smiles of helpful and conscientious people being the practical recognition of the broader management at GV Health, we should celebrate our hospital.

The idea of public health, as we see it at GV Health, is as it should be with each of us willingly opening our wallets to ensure health care is there for all our fellows, and ourselves, at minimal or no cost making the private health insurance industry both irrelevant and unnecessary.

However, what we have in Shepparton, as is the case throughout Australia, is entangled in perverse machinations that have evolved over decades as the tentacles of the market economy have been allowed, almost welcomed, into the cash-rich veins of the health industry.

First, it should not be considered an “industry”, rather it should be a service; a service whose aim is simply that of making those who use it, well again and not making those who work within it, rich.

Last week’s “Four Corners” program on ABC TV explored the problems of our burgeoning health industry and expeditiously avoided the ideological debate about private versus public, but was able to point toward many private health patients who had been exploited with costs far exceeding what was expected.

Australia’s public health service is among the best and to keep it there and improve it even more, it seems that upon being elected to any State or Federal parliamentary position, he or she who is elected should be required to immediately forgo whatever private health insurance they might have and so be forced to experience first hand the public health service they are responsible for.

Considering life, it is mostly only personal experience that enables you to make any sort of worthwhile or useful judgement about the services upon which we depend. 

Modernity has disguised the fact that we are 'the' invasive species

Modernity has blurred the line between what is and is not an invasive species.

"Leviathon"
 by Thomas
 Hobbes.

Of course reference to history will quickly clarify any doubt, but what was once, foreign, rare or not naturally occurring is frequently so common and accepted that it is thought by many to be “native”.

Australia, New Zealand and smaller south Pacific nations were once wonderful examples of how their isolation had resulted in what had been hitherto unseen and unknown species.

However, just one species, Homo sapiens (wise man or modern humans), that’s you and me, has followed in the footsteps of its ancestors colonizing almost all available space on the planet.

Expansive intellectual prowess has launched modern man to the top of the food chain, pushing many other species, from massive to microscopic to extinction or the margins and now, it seems those smarts are going to be the seeds of our undoing.

Not many centuries ago there was certain, and necessary equilibrium about the earth with birth and death in both animate and inanimate “things” being timely, equating with what was needed to ensure environmental balance.

Modernity, driven by the wants of the “wise man” as opposed to his/her actual needs, changed all that leaving us balancing precariously above a chasm.

Troubles bigger than you and I block our escape and there appears to be an absence of endeavour from both international and national institutions to actively pursue societal changes that would avoid the fall.

Seeking to attribute the blame to someone or something, many turn their gaze to the uncensored and unfettered rush of capitalism that has plundered earth’s finite resources in its pursuit if infinite growth and profit.

Modern life, despite its critics and those who pine for what was, is unquestionable better than what existed and described by Thomas Hobbes inn 1651 book, “Leviathan”, as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Homo sapiens have become earth’s true invasive species, threatening not just all other species, but even its own future, and even, maybe, its own extinction.

However, let us not be too despondent for just recently the British-based Philosopher’s Mail noted in a story about “Welcome to the Dawn of Capitalism”, in which the criticism of the hunger for growth and profit was acknowledged, it said: “But perhaps the good future depends not on minimising Capitalism but on radically extending it”.

“If we could just address our deeper needs more directly, our materialism would be refined and restrained, our work would be more meaningful and our profits would be more honourable. That’s the ideal future of Capitalism,” it said.

Maybe we are “the” invasive species and maybe it is time we engaged our naturally endowed intellectual prowess to become more refined and restrained to live more meaningful and honourable lives?