Croakey will be live blogging the leaders’ health debate today; join us here from about 12.30 today.

Meanwhile, here is some more advice from the experts to help the PM and Opposition leader with their last-minute preparations (following on from a related post yesterday).

Senior bureaucrat:

Prime Minister, Aboriginal patients in hospitals generally are more unwell than other patients, stay longer, have other cultural and social needs that are different and together this means that they are more expensive. Two questions, how are you going to take these factors into account when you are paying for hospital services? Secondly how do you make sure that hospitals meet these vulnerable and more costly patients’ needs when the pressure is to bring costs within a nationally efficient price?

Mr Abbott, you are on record as saying that things like welcome to country and acknowledgement of traditional cultural ties to country is tokenistic. What would your health plan do to ensure that the health and hospital system respected the legitimate cultural rights of Aboriginal people, how would you ensure the cultural competence of the hospital system? I might point out before you answer that there is a wealth of evidence about the impact and importance of culture on health service delivery outcomes.

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Professor Glenn Salkeld, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney:

• What advice would you give the PM to help his preparations?
Explain what this health reform means for hospital waiting times, for older people who are struggling to afford a new hearing aid or pair or prescription glasses, for people who live in rural communities. How will this reform help people who live with chronic disease stay out of hospital?

• What advice would you give Mr Abbott?
Ask Mr Rudd to give some numbers – how many people will be better off? Who are they? Has he modelled the economic impact
of these reforms? What do the numbers say?

• How should we assess their performances?
We need a ‘Croakey.com’ poll.

• What do you want to hear from them?
I want hear how this reform will improve things for people who rely on our health system. I want to hear about the numbers that back up their plans and how we will know if this reform works.

• And what do you want them NOT to say?
That their plans will be better for ALL Australians unless they can explain how they intend the reforms to address health inequalities.

• Anything else you’d like  to raise?
When will they bite the bullet and subject our hospital and primary health care expenditure to the same requirements for cost effectiveness
that we apply to pharmaceuticals on the PBS and medical services on the MBS

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Health economist Professor Gavin Mooney:

• What advice would you give the PM to help his preparations?
Cut out the waffle and tell us that he wants to get the Australian people involved in setting the values to underpin the health  service.

• What advice would you give Mr Abbott?
Cut out the nasty populism  and tell us that he wants to the Australian people involved in setting the values to underpin the health service.

• What do you want to hear from them?
From both that they accept that rising inequalities are resulting in greater ill health  in the Australian population and they are prepared to act to reduce such inequalities.
From both that they want to strengthen health service management and leadership.
From both that they will stop the stealing of doctors and nurses from sub Saharan Africa or where it continues to happen that they will compensate the countries concerned.
From Abbott that he wants to withdraw the comments he was reported to have made as health minister regarding Aboriginal culture and health as follows:
“There seems to be an inordinate amount of time taken up with funerals and ceremonies…If you’re going to develop a work culture, you can’t have a three-month ceremonial season (each year) and you can’t take six weeks off because your cousin has died,”
”Why not get them out shooting the camels,” he said. “It gives them something they would love to do and it beats petrol sniffing.”

• And what do you want them NOT to say?
Rudd: “working families”!

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Senior health bureaucrat:

Where is prevention in this reform propsal?  Not preventative medicine eg cardiac rehabilitation but real before the fact of illness primary prevention?

What has happend to Public Health in Australia?  The division across the country of it into components of prevention and health protection has meant that the value of Public Health has been lost.  Is the Government considering Public Health and prevention or has it just forgotten the area?

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Sebastian Rosenberg, Director, ConNetica Consulting, and Senior Lecturer, Brain and Mind Research Institute at the Sydney Medical School:

Key question for both leaders, particularly Rudd, is which National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission recommendations are going to be supported and which are not?

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Cydde Miller, Policy and Networks Manager, Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association:

• What advice would you give the PM?
Detail your health reform proposals, don’t engage in debate on history with your opponent.

• What advice would you give Mr Abbott?
Detail your health reform proposals, don’t engage in debate on history with your opponent.

• How should we assess their performances?
On whether we can understand more of their health policies at the conclusion of the debate than when it started.

• What do you want to hear from them?
Clarity and genuine ideas about not only the solutions but the challenges their proposals must overcome – and how this will be achieved.

• And what do you want them NOT to say?
Is it possible for a politician to NOT engage in rhetoric?  Idle, petty mudslinging and vague motherhood statements will not cut it when we’re talking about health reform.

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Dr Peter Parry, Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist:

Secure attachment between parent and infant is extremely important for both physical and mental health and personality development in the child.  Mr Abbott should be greatly commended for advancing the debate over extended parental leave as a means of facilitating secure attachment for Australian children and a healthier next generation.  Will he give a commitment that for similar reasons, asylum seeker children and their parents will be kept out of medium or long term detention?

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Crikey contributor David Gillespie:

I wouldn’t mind hearing how both of them intend to address the predicted 436% increase (by 2032) in the cost of ‘treating’ Type 2 Diabetes.