Too often we are hearing the everyday stories of ordinary people coming up against roadblocks to efficient health care because of government shortfalls.

Our Border community must have a new hospital.

IN OTHER NEWS:

And so government - NSW, Victorian, federal, it doesn't matter who - must stump-up the cash to get the job done.

It's a reality, too, that this means a billion dollars must be found.

Given the inefficient way in which our current system runs, due to ageing, splintered infrastructure - such as patients being ferried between two hospital sites - is this really so much money?

No. It is not. It is small change within the context of a regional population of 300,000.

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It is nothing within the context of a system that employs a large number of dedicated health workers who patients praise again-and-again for their outstanding skill and care, yet who are being burnt-out by the primitive conditions in which they work.

A glimpse into the ongoing crisis besetting our Border's hospital system was provided in Wodonga on Monday.

Stories were told of patients being sent to Melbourne because emergency beds weren't available, of parents travelling into Albury-Wodonga from outlying towns with their children not knowing if the journey was worth the risk.

We have heard of the Victorian government's behind-closed-doors master plan, details of which no one in this community knows anything about.

We hear of potshots fired between the two state governments over whose job it is to get the hospital built, of a federal government that until recently hid for too long behind the "we don't build hospitals" mantra.

OUR SAY - GIVE US A NEW HOSPITAL:

If each of the three governments actually got into the same room, at the same time, they could quite easily find a solution.

If the Albury Wodonga Health board stepped out of its comfort zone and applied pressure on the Victorian government, as is its obligation to the community it represents, we might not be sitting around wondering why plans for a single hospital on a greenfield site have not been released.

The cynical political parochialism now at play is messing with real lives and must stop.

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