David is concerned about the 5000 public servants required to operate the government aspects of health services.

That is only one per 4,500 Australian residents. I think we can afford them.

They probably don't cost all that much more than total cost of all the politicians, Commonwealth and State, that we all fund.

"Getting the government out of hospital ownership would improve healthcare."

Anybody who says this is either delusion, or stands to make a lot of money.

The government owned nursing home in the ACT was sold by the Liberal government to a private operator.

Subsequently nursing numbers have slashed and patient care deteriorated. The ACT government passed a secrecy provision.

This is what a Private Operator does,

The nurses working hours are reduced, by reducing the hours nurses work the bottom line increases, The working hours done by cleaners and patient care assistants are also reduced, which then results in reductions in the salaries of the lowest paid workers in the Private Hospital.

Subsequently the cost of specialists rises faster than the rate of inflation. The CEO or board may have interests in companies subcontract to that particular Private Hospital.

For example Health care Australia and Spotless.

The reason successful sociopaths want governments out of health care, is so they can rip patients and insurance companies off.
https://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/health/sociopathy.html

Thus they are like the bankers.

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This system has always been vulnerable to pressures within the community such as fascism, apartheid, commercialism and now corporatism. It has bent before the winds of change and then recovered when society has finally rejected the beliefs which caused the problems. Good examples of this are the way the not for profits health care providers have bent before the pressures of corporatisation, and the way in which university establishments have responded to the pressures from the corporate marketplace by abandoning their critical role in society.

Corporatised Health and Aged Care suffer from all of the problems I have described. The frames of understanding create a set of desirable outcomes that are in direct conflict with the services desired by society. They conflict directly with understandings that already exist. People who identify totally with these new frames of understanding are given unlimited power and credibility. The corporatised market is intensely competitive and those who are unable to compete in a sociopathic manner go under.

Leyonhjelm has been described as a "libertarian purist" who wants government "wound back to a minimal role in society"

So basically all the protections formed by the Magna Carta, OH & S, Fraud, legal protections that ordinary australians have,

Leyonhjelm, by winding government back to the minimal role in society, means that the law of jungle will prevail. There will no longer be a minimum wage, no protections from harmful corporations, smoking, poisonous polluting industries.

People would no longer be able to get compensation like the Thalidomide drug scandal. There would be no protections from fraudulent health care providers.

We would still have lead in petrol.

We have seen David's vision and it is called the American health care system. No thanks.

The comparisons on similar procedures done in private vs public hospitals has shown time and again that private hospitals do these procedures at about 75% of the cost in public hospitals. Private hospitals don't do all procedures, but those they do, they do cheaper and better.

I don't know if I would go as far as privatising all public hospitals, but certainly would move substantial work to private hospitals.