Help create a paradigm shift for Innovation, Invention and Productivity in Australia

As a veterinarian, I'd like to see the equivalent of Medicare for animals. There IS pet insurance, however few seem to know about it, and even fewer seem to understand that there is an 'excess' payable in each instance. In effect, this 'excess' causes owners to still have to fork out for procedures and/ or medications if the costs add up to less than about $200-250 per event. This is in addition to the few hundred dollars a year they pay in premiums. The ones that truly benefit from pet insurance probably wouldn't wish to do so either. When owners can actually claim for the cost of procedures amounting to thousands of dollars, their pet is actually already in grave danger.

Yes, you can be thankful for pet insurance when your dog needs an operation and chemotherapy to manage an aggressive bone cancer in its leg, or when your animal needs an MRI of its brain because it has unexplained seizures. But is this the sort of hair-raising experience you really want to have?

The benefits of 'Medicare for animals' are three-fold:

1. Cash-strapped pet owners no longer have to struggle between deciding whether to treat their sick animal and eat cardboard themselves for several months or to euthanase their pet for the sake of ensuring some quality of life for themselves. Clients also need not leave their animal sitting sick for three weeks before bringing it in as an 'emergency', because they fear the cost of the vet bills.

2. Veterinarians no longer have to put up with complaints that vet bills are 'too expensive' or that we 'charge too much'. Veterinarians can finally focus on actually doing their job guilt-free rather than trying to do the job plus quietly subsidise owner's bills at the same time. Believe it or not, some vet clinics out there actually do this.

3. The lead on from the above is that veterinarians can finally charge the government, *ahem* the clients, what is actually due, and maybe only then can veterinarians cease to be underpaid doormats.

And HOW exactly do we do this? A 'Pet Medicare Levy' of course, payable only by registered pet owners. They pay a levy each year, just like a tax, that is scaled according to what species of pet they have and its size. Pet owners who want to 'benefit' from this scheme and pay government-subsidised vet bills would obviously be forced to microchip and register their animals with council and the government database in order to get a card that itself bears a microchip. This microchip contains all details of an owner's current pets and can be updated at any council or government office whenever the owner gets a new pet or a pet becomes deceased or lost.

Any animal, whose details are NOT on this microchip, does not qualify for any benefits under this scheme and pay full price on all vet bills, which would undoubtedly now be stratospherically expensive. Look, if not for bulk billing, our doctor's bills in reality actually do cost a freakin' fortune! All vet clinics will also carry a standard card reader that allows them to access the details on such 'Pet Medicare Cards'.

If pet owners are given a greater incentive to have their pets REGISTERED with an authority, we would finally get the ball rolling. Now, all we can do is talk till we're blue in the face about the importance of microchipping and registration. Yet, I see squillions of pets who have no microchip and are not registered. These animals get lost, get run over by cars, are stolen, spread disease like Parvovirus and cat AIDS, decimate wildlife, or are busy outside making babies with other individuals of their own species, getting into fights or worse, roaming at large and attacking people and their children.

There is still room for improvement when it comes to responsible pet ownership. And if anybody can't even afford the 'Medicare for Pets' levy, then they better think hard about whether they ought to own an animal in the first place.

Man, you sound angry. What statements exactly are you referring to?

The whole part where you talk about a compulsory "animal ownership" tax where all animals are "microchip ed" and a database of all animals are stored by the empire for the greater benevolence. All hail chairwoman gillard (may her footprints reduce carbon for all eternity)

ps: All civilians caught owning contraband or animal paraphernalia will be prosecuted to the full extend of the law for crimes of environmental terrorism and inciting hatred towards our green mother earth.

And so I presume you are an armchair expert and an absolute genius. What is your counter-proposal? I am not proclaiming to know-it-all, but by George I've worked in this business for long enough to see where some of the problems are, problems that the celebrity vets have failed to raise to the public!

By the way, if you actually read things properly, it would be noted that I didn't mention such registration is compulsory. In my post in fact, there is a specific mention of what the consequences would be if people did not register their animals. They simply would have to pay full price. They don't get fined or thrown in jail or be forced to relinquish their animals.

Although having said that, IMO, if people can't even be responsible enough to register their animals or microchip their animals (which is required by law by most councils these days), then they have more thinking to do regarding pet ownership.

Of course, it is a stretch for the government to even implement something like this. However the whole purpose of the thread was to bring in ideas. If nobody ever suggested something like this, do you believe there is any chance ever of anything being done?

Bottom line is this: get involved, or get out of here.

Just to add on, in comparison to our current Medicare (for people that is) system, the 'Medicare for Pets' system is more fair. With Medicare at the moment, regardless of how often we use the public medical system, we are forced to pay a percentage of our salary as Medicare Levy. Worse still are those who leech the system by not working, hence not paying tax or Medicare Levy, and yet take advantage of the system by going to the doctor every other week.

I haven't seen the doctor in over two years, and yet I've had to pay my Medicare Levy accordingly. At least with 'Medicare for Pets', it's entirely up to the owner to decide. For example, they may take the risk that their pet may be problem-free in its younger years and register for the scheme only when their dog or cat becomes middle-aged at 7 years old. This is not particularly wise of course, but you get the picture.

With pet insurance, most companies wouldn't even insure your pet once its had its 10th birthday. With 'Medicare for Pets', you could register your pet at say, 16 years old when it's dying from renal failure and all the expensive treatment starts. 'Medicare for Pets' does not check for 'pre-existing conditions', in this sense.

The drawback of this is that people could take advantage of this system by intentionally not registering their animals when they're younger, which is unfortunately the time they're likely to cause the most damage when allowed to roam, more likely to fight, get lost and stolen. So to combat this, we could likewise have a lifetime health cover loading once animals are registered past a certain age. This age would differ between species because of their differing life expectancies. The same penalty currently applies for people when they don't get health insurance after they turn 31.

Why does everything have to be regulated and controlled by a government body ????
that only results in less efficiency and more cost for the services which where ment to be improved in the first place

No matter which way you flip it, at the end of the day, private enterprise will always run cheaper and more efficient then something regulated and controlled by big government

Just think about it for a minute

What happened to the price of phone calls when telstra was privatized ?

What happened to fuel when "fuel watch" or what ever it was formed ?

What happened to house prices when Rudd introduced the 14k FHBG with the purpose of improving housing affordability ?

What happened to the price of installing insulation in your roof when the batts scheme was introduced ?

How about our health care system for humans ? How would you rate that ? its a total shambles 

Im actually an advocate to partly or fully privatizing the health care system to improve our health care and reduce its cost

Im not having a personal go at you, But you have to realize that anything government gets its hands on, it wrecks, and state wide health care for animals would be no different

More government and more control just means more administration, less efficiency and more cost to everyone.  big government is not the solution to all the problems in our lives and imo this is not progress.

thats just my take.

Haha, believe me, I don't have any more faith in the government than you do. Not here anyway.

Unfortunately as it stands right now, with multiple private companies offering pet insurance, the message ain't getting far enough, especially judging by the number of people who actually ask me if there is 'Medicare for Pets' or if insurance is available. And neither does it ensure that people microchip and register their animals in order to get the benefits that insurance provides. Microchipping and registration imposes responsibility on pet owners, which should be the norm. Pet owners should not be allowed to buy a cat for Christmas and then dump it outside to become a 'stray' after it's urinated once in their house!

One of the issues I've noted in my line of work is people acting as 'surrogates' for dozens of stray cats in the neighbourhood, not actually taking any responsibility for them but then feeding them and allowing them to produce more kittens, which a lot of councils are struggling to keep under control. It results in literally hundreds of kittens coming in to my clinic to be destroyed. Imagine if a desexed animal could be accorded more benefits for the same levy, or otherwise same benefits but a lower levy.

Once I had one client bring in a 'stray' cat that she feeds but does not own. It had a complete fracture of one of its back legs, the leg was flapping in the breeze. The cat wouldn't stand a chance against other stray cats or an oncoming vehicle. I advised her of the means to manage it. Xrays. Surgery. Minimally it should get xrays and a cast. Nope. She didn't want to spend too much money on a cat she actually didn't own. She promptly took it back home and said she'd shove it out to the streets again. If she had the equivalent of 'medicare' for this cat, she'd treat, no probs. After all she was already paying the levy, might as well take advantage of that and get the surgery done.

I have an invention. Its a food preparation system which people can utilise. It involves integrating a freezer and a fridge together and
including pullies, scales, timers and a computer to rotate every 24 hours worth of food for an indvidual. I have a menu crafted on the woolies website which includes all the ingredients for three months worth of food prepared into disposible containers which every three months I send to a private food catering service which prepares all of this according to a menu I have pre-prepared. They then deliver all this to my front door and I stack it away in my freezer.
 

The next phase of my invention is to create the integrated fridge and freezer as specified above. I currently transfer manually every 24 hours worth of food from my 500L chest freezer into my refrigerator, every night. I want the next phase to eradicate this requirement. 

Can anyone suggest how I may go about finding someone to help me develop and promote my idea?