Australia is rich, but dumb, and only getting dumber. Investment in research and development has fallen to just 1.69% of GDP, well below the OECD average of 2.7%. That gap affects our capacity to deliver improvements in healthcare.

Quick #auspol reminder that Australia is not a high taxing country. We may tax the wrong things at high amounts, but not much overall. If we taxed at the medium OECD rate, we'd have an extra $80-100 Billion (B!) a year to invest in things #ausbudget Stats c/- @lukeslawomirski.bsky.social

The great news for today: that the Albanese Government pulled its “friendless” Freedom of Information Amendment Bill. Read @thepointau.bsky.social's "3 reasons to be glad the Government's FOI changes have been scrapped" --> thepoint.com.au/explainers/2... #auspol

On #inflation and #interest rates - @jimchalmers.bsky.social may be dodging responsibility, but Jennifer Hewett & the AFR fail (refuse) to even name the issue of #taxreform. It's about structure, not just "spending". Cool demand in mortgage-free households & ease the burden on young workers. #auspol

We measured Virtual ED staff perceptions of the working environment, attitudes to telemedicine, and the experience of their work, to permit comparison with physical EDs --> Working Environment in a Virtual Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Study onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This study developed a final set of 16 proposed benchmarking indicators and a definition for Virtual Emergency Departments, following a three-round Delphi study across four new Australian services #emergencymedicine #HSR #digitalhealth

Just read about the @aushealthvalue.bsky.social #VBHCC2025 opener by A/Prof Abdullah - "Heart" is fine, but incentives shape behaviour. Clinicians & policymakers aren't knaves (mostly), yet none of us are bias-free knights. We need more #HealthEconomics rigour in the #ValueBasedCare #VBHC chatter.

(1/4) I've found ChatGPT o3 can analyse transcripts of conversations to produce Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) of causal reasoning. Here's one of the contentious claims from today's @7ampodcast.com.au about #smokingcessation #vaping #taxes #blackmarkets & #violence 7ampodcast.com.au/episodes/fir...

".. advertising works by appealing to our emotions, not our brains. Don’t explain the details, just make me feel nice – or angry." "A leader who’s not game to do anything unpopular .. is a leader who’ll never make much progress solving our deeper problems.." www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

I love this candid options appraisal process by Mooney & Henderson (1986). There are many fake hurdles to conducting evaluations. Challenging folks to "think again" is a must, as is discussing uncertainty & describing what they think can't be measured/valued. Ultimately - make a choice. Choose it.

Apart from when used for pet projects, I suspect there's an implicit Commonwealth policy that #HealthServicesResearch is a responsibility of those who organise & deliver services i.e., the states. But not all states have the same spending power & evidence is needed across jurisdictional boundaries.

Prof. Jack Dowie shows how it was optimal for Humpty Dumpty to sit on the wall. www.easybest.org.uk/presentations/, taken from his Nov 2018 seminar "Deciding how to decide". #decisionanalysis #healtheconomics

"The happy compromise" on healthcare in Australia. An oldie but a goodie from Ron Tandberg that's still relevant to #auspol, today.

I've long found @mirandawolpert.bsky.social's FUPS concept to be a helpful way to explain the limitations of health services data ... bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Important reporting in @thesaturdaypaper.com.au on hospital and NDIS funding, and some of the dynamics that sit behind trying to improve the system. 💯🎯 @squigglyrick.bsky.social nails it. 👉👉 www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politic...

'Innovations' aren't always terribly innovative.

Love when a health economist (@mattxsutton.bsky.social) uses a qualitative causal model (Directed Acyclic Graph) to critique econometric analyses and think through what parameters and data is needed for a robust model #HESGBristol #EconSky #HealthEconomics @hope-uom.bsky.social

Am sharing our work on @bsky.app so we can get that sweet sweet blue on our @altmetric.com ring 😉

From our systematic review in @bmj.com, we developed a rich picture of the strategies and tactics for reducing the emissions produced by healthcare systems. #healthsystemsustainability #healthpolicy #healthcareimprovement