The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has made a reasonable request that private hospitals should release information “to comply with the same performance indicators as public hospitals.” So who should object to this sensible request? Good old Rosanna Capolingua, president of the AMA. Guess why?

She is worried that patients’ rights will be affected. This woman is amazing! Every time that the government, which is doling out money to medicos via their patients, wants more information on the situation in hospitals, the Machiavellian Capolingua brings up the patients’ rights argument.

Well, Dr Capolingua, I would like to know the statistics about hospital deaths in surgery, hospital infections, negligence cases and all those things that would affect me. This knowledge is my right as a patient and if it means that I will avoid a hospital or a doctor whose success rate is abysmal, then that information will help me to make a choice of medical procedure.

What Capolingua is really worried about is that the truth about infection rates etc. will be revealed and then inept doctors will suffer financially.

For patients’ rights read doctors’ right to milk the system. Medical practitioners want financial support from the government but they don’t want to report on how the money is spent.

Well, that’s too bad, Dr Capolingua, because the government and the people of Australia are fed up with your unionist self-serving antics. How can you look yourself in the mirror when you oppose hospital checklists? Aren’t we plagued by MRSA infections? How many people must perish as a result of poor hygiene following a minor surgical procedure before you and your colleagues agree to improve standards or at the least to tell us what’s really going on in private hospitals?