John as a former manager then you will understand, that by reducing the length of hospital stays and increasing throughput, increases costs.

This is very simple to demonstrate.

In fact many measures introduced to reduce costs in the short term, have proved more expensive in the longer term.

Around 1986 the decisions was made to throw mentally ill people out of psychiatric hospitals and I guess this around the time period that the rot set in.

In 1992 it was decided by our politicans to reduce the medical school intake, subsequently there is now a shortage of doctors in Australia. The decision to reduce doctors numbers was based on the presumption of reducing costs to medi-care.

You are correct in saying that the management system is built to suit politicans and bureaucrats. It must be remembered that these same people, hired consultants from the most dysfunctional health care system in the world to advise us on how to run our health care system.

In the last 15 years the number of patients treated has increased despite a reduction in avialable public hospitals beds and a reduced workforce.

If constructive steps are not taken by Rudd NOW! This means making huge capital investment the crisis is going to get much worse. Public hospitals beds will become more valuable than gold.

A preventive health care focus will reduce costs in the future, like in another 10 or 20 years. However there is a paradox in that having a healthier population, hospitals will become more expensive. The reason for that is the patients in hospital will be more critically ill, so this makes hospitals more expensive.

Sure it is much cheaper for example to treat someone with diabetes early, rather than trying to treat them when complications have started.