Interesting that as I write this there are no other posts - yet whisper anything about rising sea levels or climate change and look out.

Health reform is not foremost in peoples minds - it would be lucky to be 5th or 6th most.

The sad fact is this is not a reform - it represents a revised funding model - and a mediocre adjustment at that - a little bit of money to primary health and mental health but it is pretty much more of the same.

More hospitals beds more aged care beds ( and we cant fill the aged care ones we have now )

The explosion in chronic disease is symptomatic of system failure - yet we persist in replicating the same bed based models of health care that got us to where we are today - dumb and dumber

- Roxon tried feebly to tilt at the specialists over cataract surgery - the truth is with advances in procedral technique and the capacity of services to drive more punters in and outof operating theatres will ony see costs rise with a slavish adherence to fee for service - so your sleep doctor and surgeon can muliply thee income by putting more patients through - but the OT technicians, nurses, cleaners , get diddly out of it - maybe a warm glowing feeling but that is about it.

What we have is no reform at all

What makes anyone think that government is any better at providing health care than they are at installing pink batts?

The reason we have the health-care system we have is not because it produces better health outcomes per person on a dollar-for-dollar basis, but because people are able through the political system to indulge the fantasy of getting something for nothing by voting for politicians to take the money from someone else. Many are actually deceived by this - the oldest smoke-and-mirrors trick in the book - into thinking that they are actually getting a net benefit compared to what they would be getting if they weren't being forced into paying the money involuntarily in the first place. But if the system was as good as is claimed, then people would be willing to pay voluntarily, wouldn't they?

Since people cannot stop the government from taking the money by threatening to lock them up, they try and recoup the losses by crying like a baby for free handouts. Professional groups rush to the trough for privileges and handouts. Thus the medical profession, having long ago obtained the political privileges of restricting competition and restricting numbers, declares that more privileges and handouts would be wonderful - all for the good of the health "system" of course.

There is no reason to think that Kevin Rudd or any of his delegates down the line of management would know how to improve health services - on a dollar for dollar basis - by the only method available to a government bureaucracy, namely, rules and regulations.