ALCOHOL TAXATION is a victim of lobby groups

THE CASE

If the Australian Government is really serious about reducing teenage binge drinking it would approach it a bit differently. It makes more sense to treat alcohol in the same way as tobacco.

STEP 1 - TAKE A "NO FEAR OR FAVOUR" APPROACH TO ALCOHOL TAXATION

By all means tax alcohol, but tax it on just the alcohol content. The higher the alcohol content the higher the tax. Make the tax directly proportional - it's that simple! The human body makes do distinction as to the source of the alcohol, grapes or sugar cane or barley. Currently some sectors the alcohol industry receive special treatment for a variety of reasons. Their success is due to the extreme ferocity of their lobbying.

But at the same time we need to address some other issues.

STEP 2 - REDUCE THE APPEAL OF ALCOHOLIC DRINKS TO TEENAGERS

There is no doubt that the RTDs (ready to drink or alcopops) are specifically designed to appeal to younger people. Naturally the alcohol industry contests this. Figures show they have been magnificently successful.

"The 2005 national secondary schools survey showed that 47 per cent of 12- to 17-year-old girls and 14 per cent of boys had drunk pre-mixed spirits in the last week" -SMH August 6, 2007

The packaging is "now" and often deceptively resembles that of energy drinks. Drinkers get the subliminal message that not only are these products fun and cool but that they are also good for you. This is a bit hard to mandate, but the packaging constraints imposed on tobacco products could serve as a model. Without the "sexy" packaging the products should have less appeal.

The drinks themselves are a complex mixture of flavours, combined with a lot of sugar to completely mask the presence of the alcohol content.Sometimes it is not at all obvious which drinks contain alcohol and which don't as this American sample demonstrates.

So the actual alcohol content needs to be clearly displayed.

Step 3 - BAN THE INCLUSION OF STIMULANTS IN ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

Many of these drinks also contain high quantities of stimulants -either caffeine or guarana. The inclusion of these in the RTDs is extremely cynical. The normal effect of alcohol consumption is sedative, the consumer becomes drowsy and falls asleep, but an asleep person is of no use to the alcohol industry - a person needs to be awake to drink alcohol. So some bright, but unprincipled persons came up with the idea of adding stimulants to keep their drunks alert and drinking - and that is binging. An alcoholic energy drink seems to be an oxymoron to me.

MY VERDICT

Kevin Rudd, Brendan Nelson, Nicola Roxon, Joe Hockey get real! Stop playing party politics about this. Stop using alcohol as a political football and tax cow. Put a comprehensive and logical set of policies in place. (note to self - stop mixing metaphors, they are as insidious as mixed drinks)

MEDICARE AUSTRALIA - callow or incompetent over PBS changes?

THE CASE

Dispensing software is provided to all Australian pharmacies by just a handful of fiercely competitive companies. The performance and parameters of this software is regulated by a myriad of State and Federal agencies, the most important one being Medicare Australia which administers the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

In about March 2007, the previous Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, mandated changes to the pricing and structure of the PBS that are due to take effect on 01/08/2008. To allow pharmacists to dispense medicines in accordance with these changes the dispensing software vendors had to make huge, unfunded changes to their software. Having made these changes the dispensing software vendors were obliged to obtain certification (NOI - notice of integration) from Medicare Australia.

This is the problem.

To test the thousands of changes listed for 01/08/2008 Medicare provided a sample of three drugs (yes 3!), and five patients. The software vendors were not unreasonably expecting a complete file. To make matters worse these sample drugs were priced using the July formula for calculation rather than the new August pricing scheme.

But it gets even sillier.

At least some of the test patients provided had invalid Medicare numbers. Medicare Australia, of all organisations, should be able to create a valid Medicare number. Next, the SafetyNet numbers provided by Medicare expired 31/12/2006! Naturally enough the various dispensing systems just rejected this patient data.

Then the icing on the cake. The test data did not allow for testing:

Dentists Prescriptions
Optometrists Prescriptions
Section 100 drugs (Highly specific and very expensive items)
Creams and ointments prepared from scratch by pharmacists
Department of Veterans Affairs scripts for unlisted items
Medicines like children's antibiotics that the pharmacist has to make up.

So in other words, despite having more than a year's lead time, Medicare Australia could not provide adequate test data for their own initiative, but the dispensing software vendors were expected to do it in a couple of weeks. If this change goes smoothly on 01/08/2008 it is BECAUSE of the competence of the privately owned dispensing software providers and DESPITE the pathetic efforts of Medicare Australia.

MY VERDICT

Nicola Roxon please take these people out the back and bang their heads together very hard, and don't blame the dispensing software vendors is of goes horribly wrong.

NOTE

I hold documentation of all of the above.