Well, your alright jack, I mean Don!

Prior to Medibank, public hospitals were funded by the federal and state governments, privately insured patients, third party insurance and fund raising activities like fetes.

"David Himmelstein and colleagues recently contended that medical problems contribute to 54.5 percent of personal bankruptcies and threaten the solvency of solidly middle-class Americans. They propose comprehensive national health insurance as a solution. A reexamination of their data suggests that medical bills are a contributing factor in just 17 percent of personal bankruptcies"

"Have a brain tumor? The kind of insurance you have might make a difference in your survival "

Health care in Australia is not free, it is funded by the taxpayer

Wolly B: Prior to Medibank, public hospitals were funded by the federal and state governments, privately insured patients, third party insurance and fund raising activities like fetes.

The Casket paid for the Free Hospitals. Then they took the profits of the Caskets away from the Hospitals & gave the money to Sports. I should say Football & Racing. These two, although they say they are "amateur" are professional Sports. It's time to give the money from Gambling back to the Health Sector, in full.

Nothing is ever free!

Someone somewhere pays for it; and wages growth, the reason for bracket creep simply responding to eternally rising costs?

So the average battler loses every which way!

Perhaps conscription as an alternative to the dole would get the indolent up off their, too tired to get up off their R soles and take a crap, bludgers up and having a go?

It might be the most distasteful job on the planet, swilling the pigs, and I've done it; but the money is not only clean but a damn sight more than the dole!

That said, we can mount an irrefutable case for real tax reform, as an entirely unavoidable stand alone expenditure tax!

Firstly, there is no bracket creep in a set and forget expenditure tax.

Foreign nationals simply can't avoid an entirely unavoidable expenditure tax.

And given it is collected via the banking fraternity, as money leaves accounts; even exchanges and remittances ,will finally pay a fair share to treasury!

Yeah sure, continued over reliance on a shrinking cadre of fewer taxpayers ain't fair, nor is the over representation by higher taxpayers!

But just changing the deck chairs on the Titanic via tax breaks for the better off, while retaining an essentially unreformed massively complicated tax system, with more holes than Swiss cheese.

Is hardly the answer, just an even larger deficit going forward as far as the eye can see!

If the total tax take is just 4% of the GNP, and the GNP is just the sum total of our combined expenditure?

[And let's not confuse the GNP, with the GDP, which are two very different kettles of fish/blatant obfuscation?]

Then a 5% unavoidable for any reason, expenditure tax, will raise more revenue!

Moreover, stop the annual bleed of at least 60 billions into tax havens, from which we get 100% of nothing!

Better we just eliminate all tax avoidance; regardless of the screams and obfuscation of the affected; for whom the world owes a living Aidan!

If there's a better more obvious less expensive way?

Let's hear it!
Rhrosty.

You make several good points there Don.

It is frustrating that so many people in our society believe they are entitled to completely free health care, but yet still complain if they have to go on a waiting list for operations etc. Yet they willingly cough up the money needed for Fido to be seen at the vet!

Can they imagine how long those waiting lists would be if we didn't have private hospitals and private health insurance that some people are willing to pay for?

It is a good thing that public hospitals provide most services for free, because our society should be able to afford to pay for the health care of those unable to pay for it themselves, for whatever reason. Those on health care cards need to be cared for by the wider society.

However, what really annoys me is those people not on a health care card, or those who just don't want to pay to see a GP, feel they have a right to just wander in to our public hospital 'emergency' departments to have their non-emergency problems seen to for 'free'.
Then they have the nerve to complain about long waiting times while the ED staff rightly attend to the real emergency patients first.
Public hospitals should be reserved for those who really can't afford private health cover, and not for those who would just rather use that money on smokes, alcohol, drugs or gambling etc instead of on their own health care needs.

A well publicized U.S. study, by the medical fraternity, found that it costs over $70,000.00 a year to look after someone in either hospitals or nursing homes, or $40,000.00 a year to keep them comfortable at home and providing enough services to do just that!

Just because two people occupy it doesn't double the service/maintenance costs of a house, its yard, or the no longer doable for any reason, housework!

Bring back pragmatic policies!

And preventive medicine saves even more money; as does an affordable mediterranean diet!

Lots of fresh fruit vegetables and unprocessed grain, nuts and dried fruit, fish and a set of stairs to climb at least twice a week!
And just a modicum of mostly fermented (cheese and yoghurt) dairy products

Fresh fish usually entirely unaffordable at $20.00 a piece by someone living on just 25% of an average male income!

And or, paying a mortgage or the gold plated price of energy needed to cook it?

Snap frozen fresh from the farmer's field, being way more nutritious, than vegetables spending a day in the market and one more on the back of a truck; and then sitting on supermarket shelves for a week or more?

And the best reason for retaining a city encircling green belt full of little labor intensive market gardens, replete with freshly picked farmer's markets!

I mean we hit those who just can't afford to go solar with gold plated energy costs; and then make a healthy diet completely unaffordable; let alone alternative medicine like artery cleansing cheap as chips chelation therapy or hyperbaric oxygen Therapy.

Oxygen being implicated in all healing; particularly things like formerly untreatable diabetic ulcers!

We can prosper the returns for big pharma; or the health prospects of the elderly, the majority of our health budget; just not both!

And guess who has the most political clout in this particular arena; penniless pensioners living in penury, or the trillionaire drug companies, with their almost exclusive reliance on turning the elderly as managed, walking (I've got a pill for that) pharmaceutical receptacles!?
Rhrosty.