dnicholson, unfortunately it doesnt have to be sold to the voting public. You only need an election win that achieves a full balance of power in both houses, and the govt can claim it "has a mandate" to do whatever it likes - look at the full sell-off of Telstra (being the most recent rip-off/backflip that comes readily to mind).

To say that doctors used to save people from misadventure rather than lifestyle choices is to be deliberately ignorant of lifestyle choices of old. Why do you think so many died earlier? A awful lot were smokers, heavy drinkers, and consumed diets high in burnt meats and saturated fat (think bread and dripppings, people). I'd argue that our diets have drastically improved over the last 50 years, thanks mainly to higher levels of affluence, better transport, refridgeration and education.

Yes, I agree that we now have much higher cost equipment, which is no doubt driving up the costs, but we also used to have much higher levels of service availability in regional areas as well. Many country hospitals have closed, or downgraded to the extent of simply being a place to go to die (no surgery, no maternity, etc). We USED to be able to fund these things, so we are obviously saving money there.

One of the biggest eaters of money in any area is administration. And I am not talking about the individual hospital administrators, as from what I can see they are generally overworked and underpaid. I am talking about the vast bureacracy that sits within the system, eating up masses of money, but not actually producing anything (or even directly supporting production).

Most people over 75 are kept alive artificially by medical researchers playing God, and greedy pharmaceutical companies.

Over-population is the main cause of our current environmental problems. Too keep alive people who would have died naturally 20 years ago is ridiculous.

Only yesterday, my 87 year old mother-in-law, who suffers severe pain, said that she “couldn’t” take more than the recommended daily dose of pain killers because it was harmful! She would rather suffer pain just to live a little longer. My own mother has no quality of life at 89, and is a burden to herself and everyone else.

People now think that they have to live as long as they can, and should get a medal for it! Old age is “celebrated” by one retirement home advertisement in Adelaide, determined to squeeze as much money out of elderly people it can, and too milk tax-payer subsidies going to people who should have died years ago if nature was allowed to take its course.

Anyone past the old “three score and ten” years is definitely on borrowed time. If they can live longer naturally, good luck to them. But this stupid mania for keeping old people alive, just because science enables it, is well past its due by date.

Let nature take its course.

The claim is that universal health care as delivered by schemes such as Medicare is unsustainable. What does “unsustainable” mean?

Currently about 25% of our taxes goes to health services. If Medicare is unsustainable at this figure, then at 50% it wont be. It all depends on the priority one places on good health.

I have had some work done on my ankle which has enabled me to walk normally again. Most of the cost was covered by Medicare.

Being able to walk normally is of more value to me than a warplane costing a billion dollars to protect me from an enemy the government will not mention by name or yet another tunnel in Sydney to temporarily solve a gridlock problem in a city which has become too big to be efficiently managed.

In the 19th century much of nature was still pristine and there was sense of community due to a lack of easy mobility away from one’s locality. These have been significant loses.

In compensation, today we have the world’s best music in our homes, we have beautifully illustrated books and we have women’s lib. But, it is modern medicine which really makes living in the 21st century better than living in the 19th .

To argue against universal health care is a failure to get our priorities right.

Oh please. Another report from the Centre for Independent studies favouring scaling back government assistance. Surprise surprise.

The solution posed by the author is removing medicare altogether. Quite frankly, this is a total copout.

Where's the discussion about reassessing the responsibilities under medicare? I get that with an ageing population, costs will skyrocket, but it would seem to me that instead of just absolving the government of any responsibility in relation to health, the solution would be to ensure that conditions that are likely to strain the system - such as arthritis and obesity related conditions, are shunted into a different system.
Just because healthcare is changing, is a poor excuse to embrace a user-pays model of health entirely.

If the government can just opt out of services such as health, what are their actual responsibilities?
With education also facing drastic changes with a shift toward the private sector, I can't help but wonder why we're blithely letting the government absolve itself of duties in these core sectors, while still collecting tax - of course, the CIS are essentially advocates for a low-taxing government that carries little responsibility at all...

As you'd expect, a member of the CIS understands a complex problem in purely economic terms. This prediction of war between the generations assumes that young people would be quite happy to see their grandparents living in pain and poverty if it could save them a dollar.

Others in this forum have made imaginitive suggestions for solving the problem such as refraining from getting involved in expensive and pointless wars, and thinning out the expensive and pointless layers of bureaucracy.

How about adding some serious public debate about voluntary euthanasia? Whenever we discuss that topic dozens of boomers chip in to say they don't want to be ancient but have no choice. We could combine the humane and the economically convenient. Leigh's mother aside.

Any neo-conservatives at the CIS care to take up the challenge and introduce that public debate?

medicare was not set up in the 1800s! nor indeed in the first half of the 1900s! as 'medibank' it was set up only 30-35 years ago! the notion that 'back then' health needs and care were in the rudimentary and deplorable situation set out in the article is simply inaccurate. even if it were (which it certainly was not!) this would hardly be an argument for 'ditching' medicare now. as a previous commentator (above) has said, medicare is paid for out of taxes. this is what taxes are for. perhaps it would be better to concentrate upon the tax system, making sure that it is established and maintained so as to properly fund public needs - including health, education, transport, etc. this would be preferable to the current fashion of seeing taxation as an inappropriate burden - particularly on high earners and those who can transport themselves into 'companies' so as to avoid tax.