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Margaret M. and C.A.J. (Tony) Coady. Introduction
- Emily French
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1 Margaret M. and C.A.J. (Tony) Coady The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia Introduction The phrase distributing health care could call up images of an already existing amount of money to be distributed in the way a pie might be cut, and its equity or otherwise being established through a pie chart visually demonstrating that distribution. Equity in health care is much more complex than that image would suggest. Actual health systems are the result of a balancing of those groups who have an interest in the operation of the system. In the case of Australia, the major groups are the medical providers, the clients/patients, the government and the businesses that could benefit (mainly insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies). Though sporadic attempts to establish a health scheme began in the 1940s, the real attempt at a universal system took place in the 1970s when a Labor government was returned to power after twenty-three years and established a national health insurance scheme in 1975 called Medibank. This was interrupted by a return to power of a more conservative government in the same year, but resurrected with adjustments by another Labor government and renamed Medicare in Medicare was to be financed by a compulsory levy on taxable income, originally 1%, increased in 1995 to 1.5%. Low incomes were exempt, and at a later stage those who had incomes over $100,000 paid a 1% surcharge if they did not have private insurance. There are three key foci of the health system: out-of-hospital medical services; in hospital care; and access to pharmaceuticals. All these raise issues of access, but access to pharmaceuticals will be described separately since it is a separate system. Medicare covers both in and out-of-hospital medical care.
2 190 Distributing Health Care Medicare: Hospital and Out-of Hospital Medical Care In introducing Medicare to the Parliament, the Health Minister in 1983 described it as providing universality of cover, and as being desirable from an equity point of view (cited in Biggs 2003). These ideals are elaborated in some of the legislation governing the health system in what are called the three Medicare Principles. The first principle has to do with choice of services: Eligible persons must be given the choice to receive public hospital services free of charge as public patients. The second concerns universality: Access to public hospital services is to be on the basis of clinical need. The third is the equity principle: To the maximum practicable extent, a State will ensure the provision of public hospital services equitably to all eligible persons, regardless of their geographical location (Health Insurance Act, section 26). The specification of geographical location is interesting. Presumably the equity principle is also meant to apply to other aspects or circumstances of eligible persons, such as age, ethnic background and gender. But these are not mentioned in the principles. The special place of geography in the principle arises from the fact that geographical location is an important factor in Australia due to the size of the country and the fact that most people live in big coastal cities, leaving rural dwellers as a minority and subject to potential neglect because of their relative lack of electoral power. Medicare provides free in-hospital accommodation and medical services for patients who choose to be treated as public patients in public hospitals. The funding for these services comes from Australian Health Care Agreements between the Australian Federal Government and the governments of the states and territories. With regard to out-of-hospital medical care a Medical Schedule of Fees drawn up by the Federal Government in consultation with the medical profession is declared. Doctors are free to charge what they like. Their patients will generally pay the doctor s fee and receive back from Medicare 85% of the scheduled fee. The medical practitioner can decide to bulk bill the patient, accepting only the 85% of the scheduled fee as payment, thus in effect giving the patient free service, but ensuring prompt and efficient recovery of payment. In its original conception Medicare was intended to balance competing interests. The patient was interested in good quality, affordable, timely care. The medical providers, no doubt also interested in quality of care, had the additional interest of being paid for their services. Doctors believed the quality of their service depended in part on their clinical and professional autonomy, which involved not only freedom to make decisions about what treatment to give a patient but also freedom to determine how much to charge. Talk within the medical profession of the sanctity of the doctor/patient relationship had both a caring and a
3 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 191 financial aspect, both real and defensible in different ways, but with a tendency of the former to cloak the latter. While Medicare left the medical practitioners free to charge what they liked, the declaring of a scheduled fee and tying reimbursements to this fee meant that some rein was effectively put on medical charges. Private health insurance exists alongside Medicare, providing cover for private hospital treatment and choice of doctor in hospital. Lavelle (2006) claims there is absolutely no evidence you ll get any better treatment in a private hospital than in a public hospital. The only advantages of being treated in a private hospital are that the patient could be more comfortable in matters such as décor and possibly individual rooms, she may not have to wait so long for elective surgery, and she will have choice of doctor. It is hard to estimate how important choice of doctor is since there is no public knowledge of particular doctors success rates, and so choice depends largely on hearsay-based reputation or on the knowledge of the general practitioner who must refer the patient to the specialist surgeon or physician. More will be said about waiting lists for elective surgery in the public hospitals later. From 1984 until the late 1990s private insurance declined, possibly indicating popular satisfaction with the services offered through Medicare. When the conservative Coalition government came to power in 1996, Liberal Party Minister Brendan Nelson acknowledged that opinion polls demonstrated overwhelming support by Australians for Medicare and the universal access to public health services this entails. He went on to add: If you want to touch a broad nerve in public opinion polling then any politician just has to suggest some sort of change to universal and/or so-called free access to health care (Quoted in Gray, 2003, p. 32). In the face of this popularity the Coalition government, in spite of the hostility of many of its members to the system while in opposition, promised to retain Medicare. Of course its popularity does not necessarily indicate the equitable or ethical nature of Medicare. Over the last ten years there have been small but significant changes which affect the balance of interests of those with a stake in the system. These will be discussed in greater length later in this chapter. However it is worth noting that the intention of those introducing the original Medibank in 1975 was not to achieve the balance of interests we have indicated is one of the noteworthy aspects of the health system in Australia. The intention of the framers of the 1970s legislation was simply to break the connection between ability to pay and the obtaining of medical care. Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister who brought in the 1975 changes, intended to adopt a National Health System of the U.K. model (Elliot, 2003, p. 2). However, as Whitlam revealed in his account of his
4 192 Distributing Health Care period of government, the barrier to this simple plan was the civil conscription clause in the Australian constitution preventing conscripting of medical doctors (Whitlam, 1985, pp ). It was believed that this clause ruled out forcing doctors to bulk-bill. Thus, the more complex system giving doctors autonomy in determining their fees but with some incentive to bulk-bill was born. Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Access to medicines is at least as important as access to doctors in a discussion of the distribution of medical resources. Although it is seen as closely aligned with Medicare, it has in fact a longer history; indeed, some form of it has existed since the late 1940s. A key date was the establishment of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee in This is a statutory body whose membership includes medical specialists, health economists, clinical pharmacologists, general practitioners and consumers. After drugs have been passed for safety, quality and efficacy by the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee makes recommendations to the Minister for Health and Ageing about which drugs should be listed under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). After approval by the Minister a drug will be referred to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Pricing Authority which negotiates a price with the manufacturer before the drug is listed on the PBS. If a drug is listed on the PBS it is available for Australian residents (and visitors from some specified countries) for a co-payment currently (2007) set at A$30.70 for general patients and A$4.90 for concession patients. The co-payment may be greater when a patient requires a particular brand of the same drug, or where the price of a particular drug is above the benchmark price for its particular therapeutic group of drugs. A Safety Net Threshold exists which means that when general patients reach A$1059 in payments under the scheme, the co-payment will reduce to the concessionary amount. Similarly, when concessionary patients reach A$ their co-payment is abolished. The PBS has been the fastest growing area of health expenditure for the Federal Government. Suggested reasons for this are: increasingly expensive new drugs; over-prescribing; increased consumer expectations; the ageing of the population; and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on prescribers. It would be a mistake, however, to judge the financial viability of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in isolation from the other aspects of the health system, since much of the budget is spent on preventative drugs which should relieve pressure on the medical budget elsewhere. Anti-inflammatory drugs, anti-smoking drugs, and cholesterol lowering drugs have put most strain on the budget. However within the system there are measures which counter some of these inflationary effects. For example, there are restrictions on the phar-
5 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 193 maceutical industry advertising direct to consumers; there are checks on individual doctors prescribing patterns; doctors are urged to advise patients to try dietary means of controlling cholesterol before resorting to statins, and then only to prescribe statins if patients have a certain combination of risk factors (with one factor being diabetes). The actual cost of the drug (often many times more than the cost to the patient) is now included on the drug packaging, so that patients will realise they are being subsidised. Various other regulatory devices (such as the Federal Government s National Prescribing Service) have been tried, mostly aimed at educating prescribers so that costs may be reduced. Most importantly, the PBS is the only large purchaser of drugs in Australia from both local and foreign manufacturers. As such, it can and does exert pressure on manufacturers to lower prices. While in 2006 the financial demands on the PBS have been lessened, there is still concern for the future of the Scheme based on speculation about the effects of the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement of January 2005 (Rickard 2004a). The scheme is certainly not a free market, since decisions about drugs are made by a committee acting under administrative rules, and the Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has monopoly-like powers. However the government has declared that the only changes that will occur are changes in process: the reasons for recommendations of the Pharmaceutical Advisory Committee to put medicines on the PBS will be published, and there will be a review mechanism for medicines which have been rejected. The effect of these changes is yet to be seen. Pressure to list new drugs on the PBS is exerted not only by consumers and medical practitioners, but also by the organisation Medicines Australia, which represents research-based pharmaceutical companies who discover, develop and manufacture prescription medicines (Medicines Australia, 2006). This body also declares its support of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Complications of Federalism So far this chapter has concentrated on the two big schemes emanating from the Federal Government, namely Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme. Yet it is the states and territories (six states and two territories - the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory) that have constitutional responsibility for health. A major part of this responsibility is for the hospitals, funded as described earlier. But it also includes licensing or regulating private hospitals, doctors, and other health professionals. There seems little doubt that this sharing of responsibilities between states and Federal Government leads to overlapping services, gaps in services, cost-shifting and other inefficiencies. A single-payer system would avoid these problems.
6 194 Distributing Health Care Another factor contributing to a low level of medical care for some groups, particularly rural dwellers, is scarcity of medical personnel. Many Australian states have recruiting campaigns, both overseas and within Australia, for doctors and nurses. A recent matter of dispute affecting the size of the workforce concerned the number of specialists being trained each year. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) determined that governments, presumably both state and federal, should make decisions about the number of specialists being trained each year since they funded the places. This finding carries the suggestion that decisions made by the College of Surgeons had underestimated the number of specialists required, and fuelled speculation that the self-interest of specialist bodies had contributed to a state of scarcity in order to maintain high fees. Changes to the Balance of Interests Though the present Federal Government is maintaining Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, probably because of popular pressure to do so, there have been changes over the last decade which are viewed by some as compromising the principles on which the original systems were based. One of the more significant changes was the removal of the previous ban on the provision of private insurance to cover the cost of what is known popularly as the gap, i.e. the difference between the schedule fee paid through Medicare and what the doctor actually charges for in-hospital services. The most notable and unusual Federal Government move was in 1999 to give a 30% rebate on taxation of the amount paid in private health insurance. The argument for this was to encourage the uptake of private health insurance which had fallen to a low of 30.5% in June Gray points out that the fact that private insurance companies can now provide insurance for the gap has the effect of increasing the cost of health care for the community as a whole and increasing the cost to general taxpayers who meet 30% of the cost of private health insurance premiums (Gray, 2003, p. 41). The most important of the Medicare principles is that of universal access, and the debate on whether Medicare was ever and is now a universal service revolved around the issue of bulk-billing. This is the system where the doctor accepts only the government rebate and the patient does not directly pay for that treatment. The percentage of medical services bulkbilled increased progressively from the beginning of Medicare in 1984 until 1996 (Elliot, 2003). More recently the number of bulk-billed services has varied from year to year and there is evidence at present of a drop in such services. From 1994, incentives have been paid to doctors to bulkbill services to low-income families and to children in non-urban areas and Tasmania. Later this incentive was extended to selected urban areas and large regional areas.
7 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 195 The setting of a schedule fee has been one of the central levers available to the government to counterbalance the possible inflationary effects of the ability of the doctor to determine the fees charged. Over the last decade the schedule fee has increased but not sufficiently to keep doctors incomes rising at the same rate as average weekly earnings (McAuley, 2004). This gives doctors the incentive or reason to ask for a co-payment, at least from their better off patients, to maintain their salary levels relative to other members of the community. Many continue to bulk-bill for children and for those whom the doctors judge to be in financial need. In case the paternalistic altruism of the doctors wanes, the Federal Government has put in place a number of incentives for doctors to bulkbill for children and holders of Commonwealth concession cards. The other lever used by the government is to put in place a safety net to lessen the impact of medical costs on the less well off. So the consciences of the doctors and those of the general public may be salved by the thought that those most in need will still have access. The current safety net is extremely complex. When any Medicare card-holder has paid $ in the calendar year in differences between the benefit received under Medicare and the schedule fee, the benefit will move from 85% to 100% of the schedule fee for the rest of the calendar year. Since doctors are free to charge what they like, there is still normally a gap between the schedule fee and what the patient actually pays. A more significant recent change is the provision that when a patient has paid $1000 in any year in differences between the Medicare benefit and the schedule fee, Medicare will refund 80% of out of pocket costs for out-of-hospital services. This is significant in that once this amount is reached the schedule fee becomes irrelevant. Tying Medicare benefits to the schedule fee is a way of controlling inflation of costs in the medical system. Tying benefits to the amount actually charged is described by one economist (McAuley, 2004) as extraordinary public policy since it provides open-ended subsidies of the doctors fees. When the policy was first introduced in 2004, the threshold amount was $500 before out of pocket costs rather than the scheduled fee became the basis for the refund. The cost of this was quickly seen. More Australians than had been calculated reached the $500 threshold, so a quick doubling of that amount to $1000 occurred in While this open-ended subsidy of doctors fees may be extraordinary policy it is in keeping with the policy mentioned earlier of subsidising of health insurance companies through the taxation rebate of 30% of fees paid to such companies. In both cases more money is being directed to the private interests involved in the medical system the doctors and the insurance companies. It is clear that the social philosophy behind the system has changed. As Elliot (2003) points out, the system was never universal in providing
8 196 Distributing Health Care bulk-billed services to all Australians. Doctors were always free to charge what they liked. Nevertheless the system is universal in the sense that everyone has the right to the Medicare rebate. However, if the rebate becomes a less considerable proportion of the total doctor s bill, access to medical services increasingly relies on an individual s capacity to pay rather than on their health needs (Elliot, 2003). The original Medibank system was a universal system in that it provided a service where ability to pay was not an issue in obtaining medical care, where the whole community, through a specific levy on income tax, took responsibility for the access of everyone to medical services. In this, it resembled the drive behind the UK National Health Service where, as even Mrs. Thatcher put it, The National Health Service will continue to be available to all, regardless of income, and to be financed mainly out of taxation (quoted by Howard Glennerster in Chapter 3, p. 92 above). Though the levy is still in place, the system has been evolving towards one that is more like a residual welfare system where the individual is basically responsible for paying for her own medical care, and a safety net is provided for those in need. This development has, however, met with considerable community and political resistance. Senate considerations In 2004 a Senate Select Committee was set up to enquire into the proposed changes to Medicare. A number of arguments were canvassed in favour of maintaining a universal system. Bulk-billing, it was argued, is important even for wealthy Australians since it encouraged regular checkups and was thus good preventive medicine (Dwyer, 2004, p. 11). The economist McAuley (2004, pp ) argued that for reasons of social cohesion it was necessary to see health care as a universal shared good. The wealthier get less from the current system because people on high incomes are generally healthier. But McAuley argues that if health care is redefined as a charity rather than a universal shared good this may lead to what has been called downward envy, where the wealthier resent having to pay taxes in order to benefit the less well off. One of the Government senators, Senator Knowles, expressed surprise at the evidence that people somehow think health should be free and bulk-billed but are prepared to pay to get their DVD fixed and for other services (Knowles, 2004, p. 15). Professor Dwyer s response was vehement: The big difference here is that through progressive taxation, through indexing contributions to our income, we have a system that overridingly is equitable and by which Australia, the lucky country, is able to supply its citizens or should be able to supply its citizens with quality health care independent of ones personal or financial circumstances. That is ideological;
9 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 197 it is a principle that I am absolutely convinced Australians hold dear. Health is different. (Dwyer, 2004, p. 15) Philip Davies, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing represented the government s position at the Senate Committee (Davies, 2004, p. 27). He pointed to government decisions to increase the number of doctors and nurses. Davies anticipated that this would have a downward pressure on doctors fees, and possibly increase the rate of bulkbilling. He went on to argue that universality would be maintained because all Australians will continue to receive the same level of Medicare rebate, and all Australians will continue to be eligible to be bulk-billed. But he reasserted that Decisions on when and who to bulk-bill remain a matter between individual doctors and their patients. Davies evidence to the Senate Committee provides another example of the hybrid nature of the Australian healthcare system. On the one hand the government has a degree of control over supply of doctors, particularly in its funding of training places, but at the same time it defers to the individual doctor s judgment at least in determining fees. Quality There seems little point in talking about equity if the good to which people have equity of access is of low quality. There is a practical point as well as a philosophical point to this claim. For if the quality of health care is low in a country, then the better off can travel in order to gain better quality care. Quality in a health system is hard to determine. There are certain elements which can be measured, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and number of medical personnel per capita. On all these measures Australia does well. Life expectancy for Australians (OECD Health Data) is high, at 83 for females born in 2004 and 78.1 for males, in each case well above the OECD average. More significant is the healthy life expectancy, which is the equivalent number of years in full health a newborn infant can expect to live based on current mortality rates and prevalence distribution of health states in the population (OECD Health Data) In these terms Australia falls behind only Japan, markedly, and Sweden, Italy and France, marginally. In the area of infant mortality Australia does slightly less well with 4.7 deaths per 1000 births which is in the middle third of OECD countries. The number of doctors per capita is 2.6 which compares favourably with most English-speaking countries but which is behind France, Greece and Italy (OECD Health Data). Likewise the number of nurses, 10.4 per 1000, is high in comparison with most countries. In terms of equity it seems important that the facility to which all have free access, namely the public hospital, is of high quality. This may have been achieved through a number of circumstances. These circumstances
10 198 Distributing Health Care include the fact that the public hospitals are generally teaching hospitals and connected with University departments of medicine, and that the majority of accident and emergency departments are in public hospitals. The Doctors Reform Society was fond of repeating the story of the then wealthiest man in Australia, Kerry Packer, who in the 1990s suffered a heart attack while playing polo. He was rushed to a public hospital and after being stabilised was transferred to a private hospital (Doctors Reform Society, 2004, p.1). The claim is made that even the wealthiest Australian is dependent on the quality of the public hospitals. Is there some kind of Rawlsian calculation here? No matter what our ethnic background or financial resources, we may find ourselves dependent on a public hospital in an emergency, so they had better be good. The major complaint about the public hospitals is not about the quality of treatment but about the fact that they have long waiting lists for what is described as elective treatment. This elective surgery can cover any condition which is not immediately life-threatening. For many people there is no alternative but to wait in pain and possibly be unable to work or carry out normal activities but if a person has private insurance she can choose to have the surgery in a private hospital with a surgeon of her choice. Podger (2006, p. 3) claims that waiting lists for emergency departments are shorter than for the U.S., Canada and the U.K. and waiting lists for surgery are shorter than for Canada, N.Z. and the U.K. Nevertheless a survey of one hundred general practitioners in Victoria in 2006 (AMAVic, 2006) found that 79% of surgical patients access to public hospitals was poor or very poor. Waiting lists, with the apparent solidity given by numbers and statistics, can paint a picture of a health system in crisis and provide great political weapons for opposition parties. However Mann (2006) has pointed out that the figures are both manipulable for political reasons and produced by medical judgment which can vary widely. Elective surgery is categorised into three groups: urgent, which should receive treatment within 30 days; semi-urgent within ninety days; and non-urgent with no stated target. But the triage system driving the categorisation can vary tremendously from doctor to doctor and hospital to hospital. Hospitals can be subject to financial disincentives if the category of urgent patients is too long. But the professional judgment of the doctor making the decision about the degree of urgency seems to be the most powerful factor. A former Minister of Health in the Federal Government tells the story of a long waiting list for eye surgery in Broken Hill, a small city in central Australia with a large indigenous population. So they sent up an eye specialist from Adelaide and he reduced the waiting list by a whole lot, maybe by two-thirds. Now you could say he got it wrong, or maybe the original bloke got it wrong. And, you know, it doesn t really
11 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 199 matter. Because it s a matter of personal professional judgment. The bloke from Adelaide decided those people didn t need operations (cited in Mann, 2006). Mann s own conclusions about waiting lists is that they are a form of rationing of medical resources. But it is rationing which is controlled by doctors and not open to a great deal of scrutiny. Excluded Groups While the figures on life expectancy and infant mortality and so on may indicate quality, they are no measure of equitable access. A further analysis of the health statistics suggests some marked inequities. The most shocking of these is the difference in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Life expectancy at birth is estimated as 59 years for indigenous men and 65 years for indigenous women. (Oxfam Australia, 2006, p.3), approximately 17 years less than non-indigenous Australians. It also compares badly with life expectancy of indigenous people in Canada and in New Zealand. Infant mortality in the indigenous population similarly compares badly with infant mortality in the non-indigenous population. The Australian Medical Association (Australian Medical Association, 2005) puts it bluntly: Each year 83 indigenous children die because they are indigenous. Professor Ian Anderson, indigenous doctor and Director of VicHealth Koori Health Unit, University of Melbourne, raises the key question: We haven t seen the improvements in health outcomes that have been seen in other indigenous populations across the world and we have to ask the question why. (cited in Oxfam Australia, 2006, p. 3) The answer to that question is not apparent. The authors of the Oxfam Report (2006) suggest three answers: 1. Governments must provide resources to Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander health at a level that matches the dire level of need 2. Governments must support indigenous control and participation in the planning, management and delivery of health programs and services 3. Governments must support and enable a holistic approach to health, recognising the impact that broader social and economic factors have on health (Oxfam Australia, 2006, pp. 6-8). The example of the health of indigenous Australians is instructive for several reasons. It is a dramatic example of the effect of wider social factors on health outcomes, thus showing the inadequacy of the simple pie chart approach to division of resources for health. Per capita spending on indigenous health is higher than for non-indigenous, but as the Productivity Commission states, this is against a background of much greater need, and service provision that generally occurs in more remote and costly settings. (Productivity Commission, 2005, p.17) No doubt something could be achieved by spending more money on indigenous
12 200 Distributing Health Care health, particularly targeted at areas of high need in the indigenous communities. However this is unlikely to solve the whole problem. There is a well-established connection between social class and health, indicated in the differing health outcomes and life expectancies of different suburbs of the large cities of Australia, and by the differences between health in city and rural areas. Judged in terms of health outcomes, rural dwellers and those of lower socio-economic class do not seem to receive equitable access to health resources. This suggests that if the aim is to achieve more equal health outcomes between groups, the answer may lie in achieving greater equality generally. But in the case of Australian indigenous communities, improvement of socio-economic status does not seem the complete answer. Many would argue that there is in addition the need to overcome the effects of racism and of destruction of culture through colonisation (Brennan, 2004, p. 5) Disputed Access There are a number of treatments where there are arguments about whether the treatment should be provided at all, or whether it should be provided only to a certain class of people, or whether it should be provided but not at the public expense. Abortion falls into the first category. Although there are many disputes about the practice of abortion it is available and attracts a Medicare benefit. Cosmetic surgery of a kind not considered medically necessary falls into the third category. It is available but not subsidised from the public purse. According to the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons (2006) many people travel overseas to undergo cheaper cosmetic surgery than is available in Australia, with often unsuccessful results. Various kinds of fertility treatments fall into the category of only being provided to some of those who want it. Australia is one of the more generous countries in funding infertility treatment (Smith, 2006, p.3) in that there is no cap on the number of cycles which will be funded, though there has been political discussion about such capping. But funding is only one factor affecting access. A more fundamental restriction of access occurs in regulations about fertility treatment which vary from state to state, with Victoria being the most stringently regulated. Until recently when there was a challenge under the Sex Discrimination Act, artificial reproductive technology in Victoria was only available to married women. Now it is available to both single and married women but the women must be infertile. Again the claim is that there is no medical need for fertile women to have such treatment. One effect of the restrictions has been for one Victorian clinic to set up a branch just over the Victorian border in New South Wales and to encourage reproductive tourism to avoid the reach of the regulations.
13 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 201 Facing the Ethical Problems It is obvious enough that justice in health care cannot be considered in isolation from the economic, political and practical problems involved in creating institutions for the delivery of such care. It should be equally obvious that money, politics and pragmatics are rudderless without a moral perspective within which they should operate. One need only recall the health policies of the Nazi regime towards the disabled (not to mention their health policies towards Jews) or the Soviet Union s use of psychiatry against political dissidents to get the point. Any discussion of a just or morally satisfactory health policy, especially in its access dimension, must begin by recognising that health is a basic human good. It is what Daniels calls a basic need, and he expands this with the description things we need to maintain species-typical normal functioning (Daniels, 1985, p. 42). Daniels notes however that, for various theoretical reasons, John Rawls does not include health care as what he calls a primary social good. These primary goods are focussed on certain liberties and their relation to income and wealth, and in Daniels adaptation of Rawls to the case of health care, the moral necessity for such care emerges from the right to fair equality of opportunity. There are several things problematic about this approach, but the principal one is that, however well it fits the Rawlsian schema, there is something perverse in the idea that the good of health care is instrumental to the primacy of the opportunity to pursue careers which, Daniels thinks, is Rawls primary concern (Daniels 1985, p. 43ff: for the point about Rawls primary concern Daniels, 1985, p. 45.) There are many people who have no such interest, e.g., the very elderly, the very young, the very idle, the severely handicapped, and, by some accounts, certain unassimilated indigenous peoples. Yet all of these need a minimum level of healthy functioning, and the state they live in has some responsibility to ensure it. Of course, this objection to Daniels might be met by giving such notions as careers a much broader reading than jobs or offices. We could disconnect career from the option of competitive job-seeking and the construction of life plans that are often found in such writings. Niall Maclean defends Daniels approach in this sort of fashion (in a footnote to his chapter in this volume). This seems a departure from the spirit of such as Rawls, but it would make of health a more basic good than Daniels own scheme seems to do, though still treating it as, in some degree, instrumental. There is an interesting question about the ways in which some very fundamental values may nonetheless have some suggestion of instrumentality about them. It is usual to distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental goods, as between those that are valuable in themselves and those that are valuable only as means to other goods. But this can be
14 202 Distributing Health Care misleading in several ways. One is that things valuable in themselves can also be valuable as means to other good things, as knowledge may be intrinsically good and also valuable as leading to prosperity or the admiration of others. Another is that what is valuable in itself may have that value in virtue of its complex relation to other goods with which it forms a valuable whole. So health may be good in itself precisely because it is a basic constituent in what could count as a good life. Both these thoughts are present in Aristotle s discussion of ethics and the good, and he particularly insists that fundamental goods are constitutive of eudaemonia or flourishing and not merely means to achieving it. Contemporary philosophers have recently elaborated the argument in different ways. Following some of the distinctions made by Korsgaard, and supported in different ways by Kagan (Kagan, 1998) and others, we might distinguish the range intrinsic/extrinsic from that of final/instrumental. Korsgaard does this because she thinks that some things may be valuable for themselves, i.e., not valuable for something else that they are instrumental in achieving, even though their value does not arise from their intrinsic properties. They may rather be valuable non-instrumentally because of some relational properties they instantiate. Thus, she would say, they have final value but not intrinsic value (Korsgaard, 1983). Some antique object, for instance, may be valuable primarily because of its rarity which is not a property intrinsic to it. Something similar may be true of other historical properties. Shelly Kagan gives the example of the pen that Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation (Kagan, 1998, p. 285). It might be better to treat these arguments, if correct, as showing that there are different ways that goods and values may be intrinsic. Thus we could keep the traditional way of framing an important distinction but complicate the basis on which it is made. There is no doubt more to be said about this debate, but the distinctions envisaged do not seem to us to damage the idea that health is a fundamental value, whether we judge it final or intrinsic. As Henry Shue puts it, the right to reasonable health support is a basic right. Shue argues that a right to the essentials for a reasonably healthy and active life is part of the right to subsistence that is fundamental to the exercise of any other rights. (Shue, 1996, p. 24.) Shue is concerned with a basic minimum, but the provision of health care in any organised, advanced society creates needs that go well beyond that minimum, or, as it might better be put, the content of the minimum expands with advances in social structures and medical possibilities and the consequent creation of new needs. Whatever the difficulties of distinguishing needs from wants and other related states, such as preferences, it is useful (as Niall Maclean, following Wiggins, argues in his chapter) to think in terms of needs when we confront such basic human (or indeed animal) requirements as health.
15 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 203 Although good health is fundamental to human wellbeing (or in Aristotelian terms, human flourishing) practicalities and cultural factors can combine to produce divergent reactions to sickness. In communities that are desperately poor, badly governed, scientifically backward, and with minimal access even to charitable support, there must be little scope for the question we are concerned with about justice in provision of health care. What can be done by families, clans, and charitable (mostly religious) groups will be done, and there may well arise issues of priority and neglect that have a moral aspect just because health is such a basic value; nonetheless, the most serious questions, and those we are concerned with here, arise only when effective cures and preventions are available and effective state organization and authority exist. Where strong, central government is a mere prospect for the remote future, then questions about the state s role in providing health care to citizens and residents do not seriously arise. Complexity in the Balancing of Competing Demands Once such questions do arise, as they palpably do in economically advanced modern democracies such as Australia, then the concern of governments must be to meet the basic needs of their populations as best they can. This is not all they should do, but they should attempt at least this. Of course, although the need for good health is universal, there will be a degree of relativity about the specific form this need takes in different circumstances. Expectations about species typical functioning will often relate to scientific possibilities, specific genetic dispositions both toward immunities and disabilities, and to some extent cultural factors. Whether deafness needs curing, for example, is a matter hotly disputed amongst some elements in the deaf community, and in the wider community, homosexuality was once considered (and still is amongst some groups) as a disease needing treatment. We may allow that complications of this sort need attention, but they are peripheral to the key idea that health is a basic human need. A more pressing problem that immediately confronts governments is that of balancing the different basic needs against inevitably limited resources. We need education, housing, political and religious liberty, freedom from poverty, and security from attack or natural disaster as well as health. And we might add, though more contentiously, capacity for leisure, opportunity for economic improvement, and for aesthetic satisfaction. Support for all of these out of inevitably limited resources, even in rich societies, requires choosing between the degrees to which these needs are satisfied. This does not mean that the values involved are no longer crucial, as some seem to think. Values and ideals remain significant, and very importantly, remain as action-guiding, even where they cannot be fully realised in certain concrete circumstances. Here we seem to differ from Professor
16 204 Distributing Health Care Fleck, though the difference may be more apparent than real, more a matter of language than moral substance. When Fleck says we need... a practical, non-ideal conception of health care justice he makes it seem as if our ideals must be abandoned to concrete judgement, but if this is his idea (and other comments suggest it may not be) then it devalues the significance of aspiration, the importance of striving to transcend the pressures of the status quo and the restrictions of what has so far been acceptable. We need to make our ideals work and to take account of all the complexities, without denying their capacity to dynamise our efforts. Take the ideal of peace. The fact that the dismal conflict between Israel and the Palestinians seems at present intractable should not mean that we abandon the ideal of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Indeed, it makes it all the more urgent that the rich moral and imaginative resources of that ideal are brought to bear upon the participants in the conflict to move it in the direction of a resolution. Similarly with justice in health care. The dynamic of the ideal of a just provision of health care not only can survive the limitations of complex practicalities, but should help guide the decisions that communities and individuals make about such provision, and help open up new possibilities. Talk of balancing the needs of the population and the potential trade-offs between values and ideals with respect to them can obscure the important fact that the relationship between these is not necessarily one of conflict. We have a tendency at one level to concentrate upon the potential clashes between justice and efficiency, equality and productivity, or freedom and security while at another level stressing the tensions between providing resources for health or education, for prevention or cure. There are doubtless clashes and tensions, but there are also intimate connections between these various pairs, so that promoting one may very often be also a way of promoting the other. In philosophical theory, some value pluralists are so concerned to stress the potential for conflict between ultimate values or significant ideals that they ignore or downplay the fact that very often these great goods as Isaiah Berlin calls them, are in supportive harmony. Berlin s rhetoric, in particular, sometimes obscures this reality. So, he says: The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution, in which all good things coexist, seems to me to be not merely unattainable - that is a truism - but conceptually incoherent; I do not know what is meant by a harmony of this kind. Some among the Great Goods cannot live together (Berlin, 1997, p. 11). Admitting that cohabitation is sometimes impossible and that perfect harmonies of any sort may be unattainable in the moral universe, nonetheless we should not accept a picture of the moral life as a zone of permanent conflict, nor overlook the many instances in which such great goods as peace and justice, prudence and compassion, and many others
17 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 205 support and reinforce one another. This insight is particularly appropriate to the topic of access to health care. There is, for instance, considerable evidence that more educated people tend to have better health, as do people with higher levels of income. Moreover, there is even evidence that higher levels of justice and equality in societies correlates with better health outcomes. As Dwyer (2004, p. 4) says in the course of discussing this in relation to poorer and wealthier parts of Sydney, In the western part of Sydney, you are five times more likely to die prematurely of a preventable disease than you are if you live on the north shore. There is always room for intervening variables, such as natural disasters, climate, religion and culture, to play some part in broad statistical results; nonetheless, the evident interconnections are ignored at some peril. What these linkages further suggest is that we should have a more complex focus upon access to health care, seeing it not merely in terms of the specific processes of delivering the care, important as that is, but also in terms of the broader social agenda related to other significant values. There is an immediate connection here with the vexed issue of the relationship between prevention and cure. If improved education, reduction of poverty, environmental protection, and better nutrition can improve health and ward off certain diseases, then funding devoted to these is itself health-related. This makes it clear that the common picture of health funding as mired in competition for resources, though understandable and realistic to a degree, nonetheless obscures the ways in which this competition is not zero-sum. Money that is taken from a narrowly defined health budget for these other purposes will often enough have positive impacts upon the betterment of health and the combating of disease. Measures to improve the amenities and self-respect of disadvantaged groups, or to provide the opportunities and resources for migrants to learn the local language seem far removed from local delivery of health care, but in fact they may make it far more effective in a variety of ways. Indeed, it has even been plausibly argued that, quite apart from such measures improving the health of the disadvantaged groups directly affected by them, the removal of socio-economic inequalities tends to improve the overall health of the whole community (Daniels, Kennedy and Kawachi, 2000). A secondary problem is that of triage within the provision of health care, i.e., that of prioritising the provision of treatment for those who are ill in different ways and different circumstances. To take an example of Professor Fleck s, if we are forced to the choice between treating the ventilator-dependent sixty-nine-year-old demented Angel Diaz at very great expense when he contracts pneumonia, and treating the impoverished, uninsured college student Bud who cannot afford a simple and effective remedy, then it would seem scandalous to choose Diaz. At any
18 206 Distributing Health Care rate, this would appear the right verdict if we are confronting the choice ab initio, i.e., whether to begin the treatment of one or the other. Indeed, if any one of us had a spare $280,000 and could spend it on treating 1400 Buds rather than one Diaz, that would seem the right option. But, of course, such choices do not present themselves in that form since they arise not from one-off options presented to individuals with no background of prior commitment, but as the result of a system and the policies that it embodies. This raises important questions about the nature of the authority for medical decision-making, and here matters are very complex, in the Australian system as in any other. Both at this distributional level and at the more general level of federal and state health budgets, much of the rationing decisions (as economists tend to call them) remain to a considerable extent ad hoc and based on tradition. It is understandable that there should be some pressure to replace this with principles of distribution that are guided by rational and moral considerations. Aside from the many political difficulties in the way of implementing such principles, there are certain obstacles within the sphere of the rational and moral. Before examining these, however, it is important to dispel one difficulty that can haunt the discussion, even if it not always explicitly mentioned. This is the clash between utility and duty, or more broadly between consequentialist and non-consequentialist approaches to ethics. There is undoubtedly the possibility of such conflict, but there are several points that need to be made in partial mitigation of it. (Utilitarianism is a narrower theory than consequentialism, but the points we are making apply to both, so we will talk only of utilitarianism for ease of exposition. We will also group the various non-utilitarian positions together under the title of intrinsicalist since they are all concerned with features of action that are not extrinsic to the deed itself or the character of the agent.) The first is that utilitarianism is a theory concerned with judging right and wrong in terms of consequences, and that fact can make it seem as though its opponents cannot themselves have any recourse to consequences, and instead must judge solely in terms of rights, duties, virtues or the like. But this misstates the opposition. The crucial point of opposition is that utilitarianism is committed (ultimately) to considering only consequences whereas intrinsicalists hold that, in addition to the consequences of acts for good or ill, we must consider also the nature and quality of the acts, the motives for acting, the rights and duties involved in the act, and much else. Hence the fact that some policy may save more lives than another can be considered an important moral factor by utilitarian and non-utilitarian alike, just as the greater good (in health terms) produced by saving 1400 Buds for the cost of one Diaz must weigh with both sorts of theorists. In particular, where a decision about a government or community policy is involved many of
19 The Ethics of Access to Health Care in Australia 207 the morally relevant partialities that intrinsicalists are otherwise concerned with (such as those engendered by friendship or family) are morally irrelevant. Whether from the perspective of general benevolence or that of justice, all citizens must initially receive equal, impartial consideration. This need not, however, mean that they must all get the same treatment or the same priority. For, instance, at an accident scene, it may be better overall for everyone if an injured doctor is treated first so that she can then assist in the treatment of other victims. And there are many other ways in which equal concern and equal respect need not translate into equal treatment. Nor need a genuine concern for the dignity and importance of individuals and the (often ambiguous) right to life translate into an obsession with prolonging individual lives whatever their state and whatever the costs, both financial and moral, to others. A second respect in which the utilitarian/intrinsicalist contrast can be misleading is that the most defensible forms of utilitarianism are likely to be those that are indirect. Ever since J.S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick, it has been clear that a simple act utilitarianism faces major difficulties accounting for what Sidgwick called Common Sense Morality, and so Mill (1972, pp. 22 3) and Sidgwick in different ways sought to make utilitarianism match ordinary morality by showing that adherence to most of the rules, prohibitions and inhibitions of common sense morality was itself more likely most of the time to produce the best consequences. Sidgwick (1962) indeed held that, from a utilitarian point of view, it was best that utilitarianism not be adopted by the bulk of people. The adoption of indirect forms of utilitarianism means that the distance between utilitarian and intrinsicalist moral outlooks is in practice greatly reduced. Simple maximising of outcomes, either in terms of numbers of lives saved or dollar cost effectiveness, need not be the proper utilitarian response to a rationing problem. Political, Rational and Moral Obstacles After this theoretical detour, we may return to the political, rational and moral obstacles earlier foreshadowed. Decisions about health care priorities in the Australian context are governed by a mix of procedures and informal understandings in which there is relatively little in the way of formal direction from above. The situation is complicated by the workings of the Australian federal system in which the States have primary fiscal and supervisory responsibility for the hospitals and the Federal Government has the major role in out-of-hospital medical treatment. The division between public and private hospitals and various linkages between the two complicate matters further, as does the extensive role of the private insurance system. There are some procedures that most private plans do not fund, such as dental care (though special insurance can be arranged for some limited dental cover) but the
20 208 Distributing Health Care restrictions are not yet as complex, extensive and even intrusive as is common in the United States. Critics complain nonetheless that things are gradually moving in that direction. The Federal Government has established various bodies, pre-eminently the AHMAC (Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council), a Federal/State collaborative effort that has set up the National Health Priority Action Council. This body has developed seven National Health Priority Areas (NHPAs) and considers them in the light of the health burden of the disease or condition, the potential for health gain and progress through national collaboration, cost-effectiveness, sustainability and reduction of health inequalities. The seven areas are: cardiovascular health, cancer control, injury prevention and control, diabetes mellitus, mental health, asthma, and arthritis and muculoskeletal conditions. Nonetheless, it does not seem that these impinge strongly at the micro level of prioritising treatment options, though they have an effect on the shape of the overall health budget. At the micro level, the doctor, or the team, in combination with the hospital authorities have dominant discretion. As mentioned earlier, the regulation of the new artificial birth technologies has a more top-down policy emphasis in some states, notably Victoria, but several states have no legislative regulatory body for this area. Decisions about the value of treatments at the beginning of life and the advanced stages of life raise many problems, but these tend to be addressed by medical interests and judgements in situ rather than government decrees. One doctor told us that when he began practice heart transplants were never attempted on people over sixty-five whereas now people in their 80s have them. This is a function largely of improved techniques and drugs, but also of increased lifespans that make the prospects of an eighty year-old much brighter than before. The question arises whether there should be more prescriptive policy guidelines or instructions from government or governmentally sponsored supervisory bodies. In favour, is the matter of consistency: it seems unreasonable that decisions on priorities and rationing are treated one way in some places and quite differently in others. As noted, different rules or practices on access to artificial reproduction in different states can lead to fertility tourism and other anomalies. Moreover, there is some confusion about the boundaries between state and federal responsibility and this sometimes creates gaps and overlaps that militate against reasonable outcomes. Against, there are several considerations. First, infertility treatment aside, it is unclear how much practices vary since professional education and mutual learning amongst medical professionals can promote a high degree of convergence in thinking about priorities. Second, the higher the level at which such rules are adopted the more they risk being too remote from the realities of clinical practice and experience. Whether this patient should be resuscitated or
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receive the full amount of any of the qualifying benefits and allowances for the full year, and have no other taxable income.
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Protect Your Drinking Water
Download the Source Protection Plan. Effective since April 1, 2015.
Launch the Source Protection Geo-Portal App to locate vulnerable areas near your drinking water source.
Drinking Water Protection Road Signs Nearly 100 signs are installed throughout our Source Water Protection region.
Download the Source Protection Brochures. Educational brochures geared towards source water protection.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Hello everyone I just acquired a old mesa 400+ that has blown tubes, and has a history of blowing power tubes quickly (in 3-4 months). My local tube amp repair guy can't figure out why it kept blowing tubes and he recommended I send it directly to Mesaboogie and have them repair it right at the factory. (The repair guy said the previous owner was always putting a 2-ohm load into the 8-ohm jack... that might be the problem) Has anyone ever dealt with the repair people @ mesaboogie ? any feedback ? Thanks for the input


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Camp Esther
August 10-12, 2018
Utica, NY
See our Get Involved page for details
By clicking through to AmazonSmile from our website,
you can support our life-saving work with any purchases you make! We encourage you to add this link to your favorites bar, and always visit Amazon this way- at no extra cost to you, NYS RTL will receive .5% of your purchase!
> smile.amazon.com <
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Please contact the server administrator, [no address given] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
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Planned Parenthood has been exposed for their callous harvesting of baby body parts. Sign the petition to help protect innocent babies and their moms!
Protect your rights and help those who want to help you in case you are unable to speak for yourself. A will to live respects life far more than a "living will."
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Nexus is a constantly evolving concept, as states (over time) write new rules or reinterpret existing law. The word nexus refers to a connection between a person and a taxing jurisdiction that is deemed sufficient to allow the jurisdiction to impose a tax. How to define that connection has been the subject of decades of debate in congress, and the courts, and in business communities. As businesses continually find new ways operate in the ever-changing world of distribution systems and electronic commerce, so too are taxing jurisdictions struggling to find new ways to impose their taxes.
Comments or questions may also be submitted to the featured sales tax specialist by viewing any of the linked posts (below) and using the on-page "Comment" feature (or other posted contact options), subject to disclaimer at bottom of page.
- New York Amazon Law Ruling: Website Nexus and Physical Presence
- Click-Through Nexus & The Law of Unintended Consequences
- Nexus: The Basis For All Sales Tax Discussions
- Independent Contractors - Establish or Maintain a Market?
- Main Street Fairness?
- Nexus Perplexus... How States View Physical Presence


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Guernsey based personal loans broker Inter Financial Limited have just released a new finance facility for residents based in the Channel Islands.
St. Peter Port, Guernsey -- (ReleaseWire) -- 06/23/2010 -- Up until now, Inter Financial Limited has predominantly focused on the UK loans market, but with the launch of a new website in Guernsey, www.loans.co.gg, residents in Guernsey, Jersey and the other Channel Islands can take advantage of Inter Financial Limited's loan finder system.
Working with a selection of hand-picked and vetted loan brokers, Inter Financial have helped thousands of UK loan applicants find the loan they were looking for at the best available rate. However, up until now, the service was restricted to residents of the UK mainland and Northern Ireland. Due to the different finance laws in the Channel Islands, anyone looking for loans in Guernsey could not use UK Loan Brokers as the legal requirements for credit agreements differ. Now, thanks to some new Guernsey partnerships, residents in the Channel Islands can now apply for loans through Inter Financial Limited.
Stuart Pike, Director of Inter Financial Limited explained "Due to many applicants using the web now to search out the best loan deals available, many applications were coming from places like the Channel Islands. Up until now, we have not been able to help those applicants get finance, due to the credit regulations in the UK not being applicable in the Channel Islands. Now we have broker partners based in the Channel Islands, we can now help those Islanders that are looking for finance get the best deal available to them."
Inter Financial Limited are also looking to offer mortgages in Guernsey in the near future once a suitable mortgage broker has been found.


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I've been in Wales now for about 36 hours. Already I've had three cups of tea made for me by various Welshwomen.
I remember when I first came to America, to California, and was surprised to discover that rarely would anyone offer to make me a cup of tea, and I have to say I thought it quite rude until I realized that it was just one of those cultural differences.
But Thelma, my parents' neighbor, discovered me sitting in the car in my parents parking spot, waiting for my sister yesterday, and had me come in the house and made me tea and sat me down for a chat with her and her husband Bryn. And every time I go to visit my parents in their new care home, the caregivers make me tea.
Very nice. A very civilized country. Sorry. Civilised, with an "s".
We will have to make sure everyone has tea, while they're here. And welshcakes.
By the way, the weather is very pleasant over here, quite warm by the late afternoon, and sunny. It's supposed to hold in this pattern for most of next week. I haven't seen any Welsh daffodils in flower, but I've seen some very close to flower. And a few lambs.
Did I mention that the daffodil is the Welsh national flower?
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INGLEWOOD — After walking out on nearly 600 parents, teachers and community leaders at a meeting this week, members of the new majority on the Inglewood Unified School District board leveled a string of accusations against the two other board members and Supt. Rex Fortune.
At a press conference the day after Monday night's walkout, Trustees William Dorn, Caroline Coleman and Ernest Shaw charged that board President William (Tony) Draper, Vice President Rose Mary Benjamin and the superintendent are being controlled by Assemblyman Curtis R. Tucker (D-Inglewood) and the Ladera Heights Civic Assn.
The majority members--who themselves have been accused of being controlled by Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent--claimed that Tucker wants control of the school board to support a mayoral bid in 1986.
The civic association, long considered a bastion of affluent blacks and whites in a largely impoverished district, wants to protect schools there that received favored treatment under the old majority, Shaw charged.


text: Grad Flowers is exclusively dedicated to providing large scale colleges and universities with a professional floral retail service at their graduation ceremonies. We make a beautiful selection of fresh cut floral bouquets available for your guests and graduates to purchase on site, on the day of your events. Convenient, beautiful, and fully staffed by professionals, it truly is a Win Win.


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John 5's 'God Told Me To' Release Bumped to May
John 5's upcoming solo disc 'God Told Me To' originally had a release date of April 10, but has since been bumped to May 8. The release date of the CD/DVD combo coincides with the kickoff of the upcoming co-headlining tour with Rob Zombie and Megadeth.
'God Told Me To' displays John 5's diverse musical tastes, showing off multiple genres as well as a mix of acoustic and electronic tracks. John 5 weighed in on the ten new songs, saying, "I'm so proud of this record, I've put more time into this release than any other! It's half acoustic and the other half electric with a tribute to Michael Jackson and Eddie Van Halen with 'Beat It'."
The DVD portion of the release gives fans a real up close and personal view of the recording process: "The DVD shows me actually recording the songs as well as behind the scenes of a "day in the life," states John 5. "This album will take you on a musical journey designed to show more diversity in my playing than in the past. Enjoy!"
Getting his hands involved in all aspects, John 5 also assisted on the production of the release along with Chris Baseford and Bob Marlette. The cover of the album was illustrated by John 5's bandmate Rob Zombie; take a look at it here.
To find out when you can see John 5 live with Rob Zombie in May, check out their upcoming dates with Megadeth here.


text: "Just Tell Yourself, Duckie, You're Really Quite Lucky!" 03/30/2016 "Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're really quite lucky!" This is a quote from the Dr. Seuss book, "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" Dr. Seuss is a favorite of mine. He's able to create fun and silly stories, all while spreading powerful, uplifting messages. We all have our individual struggles; we hit rock bottom and think things can't possibly get any worse. We do whatever it is we need to in that moment to just make it through. Know that these moments in life are inevitable and are


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Classroom Sites
- Barry University's main campus and services are located in picturesque Miami Shores, nestled between Miami and Ft Lauderdale, FL.
- Some classes and programs are being offered at our new, state-of-the-art college building in nearby downtown Hollywood, FL.
- A variety of courses and programs are offered in other locations – Tampa, Ocala, Orlando, West Palm, to name a few.
- Select courses and programs are offered using distance-learning platforms to students wherever they choose!
South Florida - Hollywood
421 North 21 Avenue
Hollywood, FL 33020
Hollywood, FL 33020
Phone: 305-899-4722
5650 Breckenridge Park Drive, Suite 108
Tampa, FL 33610
Tampa, FL 33610
1500 SW 1st Avenue, 2nd Floor
Ocala, FL 34471
Ocala, FL 34471
1415 Sligh Blvd
Orlando, FL 32806
Orlando, FL 32806
Palm Beach County
Gardens Professional Center
9123 N. Military Trail, Suite 103
Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33410
9123 N. Military Trail, Suite 103
Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33410


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What's new this summer at the Actorsingers?
In addition to our summer Teen show ("Wedding Singer"), we are going to produce a summer adult show. We are stepping out of our comfort zone to try something experimental and new…. the Actorsingers Fringe Theatre Project. This new project has the potential to not only introduce exciting, edgier entertainment to the Nashua Community but also to offer adults and college age students the opportunity to work on a theatre project (on stage or in technical areas) that will challenge them.
So, the Actorsingers Fringe Theatre Project proudly presents the Green Day rock musical "American Idiot", the NH debut of this edgy, exciting show! It will be performed at the Janice B. Streeter Theatre in Nashua the last weekend of August 2015. Audition information will be released soon. Check the Actorsingers website, www.actorsingers.org and our Facebook page for updates.
Directed by Donna O'Bryant Metzger
Music Directed by Jeffrey Prescott
Choreographed by Jen Sassak