Don't you just love it when health becomes very important, just before an election.

Kevin Rudd came out an promised these GP super clinics, guess what?

It is not going to work and become a billion dollar white elephant. They may just work in the short term, just long enough to look impressive and then gradually die by stranglation through lack of funds and because the super clinics just don't meet the needs of society.

Maybe after a little while they will be privatised.

I am very glad that we have a highly skilled and productive medical workforce. Of course I wish it were better. In an ideal world, that is a socialistic utopia, it would be from each according to ability and to each according to need. But we don't have that kind of utopia. In our real world, maximum effort needs incentive. The more and better you achieve the more you are rewarded. This fact of life, self interest, is why we have public hospitals and a degree of socialised medicine because an unmitigated market for health care would leave many more without a hope. So I am all in favour of a mixed system of public and private. Perhaps I waste over $1000 a year on private health insurance. But my cataract operation will be done in a private hospital leaving one more slot in the public hospital list for someone who can't afford to pay more than their taxes and medicare. Is my reasoning at fault somewhere?