Victoria’s surgery auction: Two bids to halve the list, and no word on who holds the scalpel

Resumen detallado

Labor has matched the Coalition’s promise to halve the planned surgery list, for $100 million less and in public hospitals. Neither party has said where the anaesthetists will come from.

In October, Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson bid $1.27 billion to halve the list — which stood at 68,730 in June — by paying private hospitals to treat public patients. On Sunday, at Labor’s campaign launch in Moonee Ponds, Premier Ben Carroll bid $1.17 billion to halve it in public hospitals: 100,000 extra operations, 30% of them regional, plus $195 million for half a million more specialist appointments.

The Coalition’s $1.27 billion figure has an interesting provenance, being to the dollar what the Crisafulli government allocated to Queensland’s Surgery Connect program in July last year. Somebody in Spring Street has been reading Queensland budget papers.

Victoria has tried the Coalition’s private hospitals method before under Labor. In 2022, the COVID Catch-up Plan set out to buy 51,200 extra public admissions a year from private hospitals. The state delivered 209,925 planned operations in 2023-24 against a target of 240,000, with private hospitals never performing about two-thirds of the shortfall in public surgery. The plan finished $356.4 million under budget. Treasury was willing; the private sector was not.

Labor’s method is cheaper, at about $11,700 an operation, and keeps the work in public theatres. The new Footscray Hospital opened in February with 16 of them, some not in use, and other public hospitals leave sessions empty for want of funds. If Labor’s money opens what the state already owns, it will be the best health dollar spent in this campaign. Labor has not said that it will.

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Both bids share a problem nobody mentions at a campaign launch. Surgeons, anaesthetists and theatre nurses work in both sectors, and the public system already performed a record 218,000 planned operations last financial year. Neither party has said where the staff for 100,000 more will come from, or over how many years.

Ben Carroll’s line on Sunday was that the Liberals “will make healthcare more American”.

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