Some people have a very low rating of the central govt; running health care. A govt run system has got to be cheaper to run than a provider full of share holders. You can't go past medibank private for health insurance.
This system should be expanded with more members and lower fees.

This is an argument that has no end, because the basic question is flawed.

Should the citizenry be entitled to universal health care, funded from taxation?

The immediate answer - "yes, of course, and it is the government's responsibility to provide it" - is a warm and fuzzy response, neatly divorced from reality.

This much is obvious when we ask the next question, "what do you mean by universal?"

Does that mean everything. Preventive, curative, palliative? Does it include varicose veins as well as setting broken limbs? How about teeth-straightening for teenagers, or collagen injections for those scared of middle-age? What about IVF, or ACL surgery?

And what part does waiting-for-surgery have on the right to universal healthcare? Can I sue the government if I have to wait so long for my bypass operation that it is too late to restore me to health - assuming of course, that I live that long?

There are also market forces present in the supply-side of the equation. If we remove the capability for qualified doctors to buy their BMWs, what other incentives shall we introduce to persuade people into the - necessarily - long and complex learning process to become one?

In a very real sense, the cost of the US system is underpinned by demand inflation. People expect more and more each year from their healthcare. They read the magazines, that tell them how medical science moves on, and expect the new technology to be instantly available to them, ignoring the facts that these machines cost money, as does the training that goes with it.

At the same time, the practitioners are in fear of making mistakes for which they can be sued, which results in i) massive over-servicing and ii) ever-escalating insurance costs.

We will always have an imperfect system, in that it will never please all the people, all the time. But any "solution" needs at least to be based in a modicum of reality, and stripped of irrelevant ideology.

John Humperies writes about the 'Government monopoly"

Well one only need to look at what is happening to the prices for gas and electricity, and water, water hasn't been privatised yet!

There will be an energy crisis in the future, prices will skyrocket, before private investors will build extra power stations, and the prices will not come down.

In the current Private Health sector, private patients are transferred to public hospitals once the private health insurance, nolonger covers them.

On the website that John claims is communist, there is an article on Succesful Sociopaths

"By definition these people are at least temporarily very successful in society. They achieve their success by socially unacceptable means and at the expense of the community and its citizens. As Robertson et al pointed out in 1996 a number of entrepreneurs seem to have these characteristics."
http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/health/sociopathy.html

"Care and profit compete directly for the health care dollar and those who can bring themselves to compromise on care will be most profitable. This problem has been recognised for 2000 years."

So John are prepared to stake all that you own, including your super, plus all consultancy commissions.

I am, plus I will work for the rest of my life for a charity, if I am wrong.

So John are you trying to sell your model to the federal government?

I think we had this argument before, back in the 70's? We decided on Health Insurance Commission as it was known then.

We had the Commonwealth bank and government involvement kept finance costs low. They privatised CBA and now there is no competition. They all suck us dry.

The same with health, competition will not happen, There will be collusion.

It works ok now, not so bad. I would prefer to stop paying baby bonus to rich people and improve health with savings like that.

" ... To those who say that everybody should have infinite healthcare... once you invent an infinite money tree, then we'll take you seriously. ... "

That's right, we don't have an infinite money tree. There are a finite number of people with an amount of health isues which we can predict with a reasonable degree of certainty based on historical data ..

(which should be centralised - i.e how many times have you been to a doctor to have them ask the same stupid questions which have already been asked by several other doctors over and over?)

(or for them because of time constraints inappropriately not to consider your overall medical history becoz they don't know what has already been recorded - and this the digital age beyond the new millenium)

!LAUGHABLE!

.. and a fixed amount of contributions which upon investment can render a fixed amount of funds which in turn

BY WAY OF IRON FISTED REGULATION of the mathematical economic equilibrium can provide a certain amount of health services at a particular standard.

What people must decide fundamentally at this point in time is whether or not medicine is a fundamental Australian Human Right or just another excuse for in this case money grubbing doctors to profiteer?