< younger generations are going have to pay considerable higher taxes to sustain Medicare. Since they won’t want their parents and grandparents to go without,>

Without medi-care, Australians would have an American style health care system, which happens to be the most expensive in the world, yet only manages to cover about 70% of the population.

A large problem facing our public hospitals is the decisions that were made sometimes more than a decade ago, have had an adverse outcome.

The introduction of a health payment system like superannuation is just another form of taxation, like the medicare levy.

Sure if everyone who had private health insurance, used that insurance it would save governments alot of money, however it means increased cost for the individual, sometimes thousands of
dollars.

There has been lots of vision for health reform and much of that vision has been short sighted, failing miserably to consider the future effects of those decisions.

No health care funding system is perfect, but what is the best system to provide health care to as many people as possible without making it prohibitively expensive for individuals.

Well Jeremy it ssems very few are interested in your article.

However what I will say is that it is economists and politicans who have created the current problems with our health care system.

Firstly they failed to consider the future in their planning and used health as a way and means of balancing budgets whilst giving tax breaks to favoured political donators.

Health savings accounts are actually not a bad idea. People would have an incentive to keep the balance up so that they would be adequately covered in the event of something really bad happening. Further incentive could be added by allowing them to pass on their unused balance when they die. Unlike private health insurance, these accounts would create some price discipline. Unlike the public system, it would make it possible to avoid excessive delays and underservicing, since you, not the politicians or bureaucrats, would be deciding if expenditure is justified.

However, imagining that everything would be hunky-dory if Nanna just saved up for her knee surgery is misguided. Half the money that is ever spent on an individual's health care is spent in the last 6 months of life (Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics (6/10/06 (London) Times Higher Education Supplement). The real problem is dying, not aging. Just as much per person is spent on dying young people as dying old people, if not more. In Australian public hospitals, according to a recent news report, 70% of the costs are for the last 6 months of life. The costs are so enormous that any health savings account balances would quickly be wiped out in most cases. In most cases it must also be obvious to all concerned that the situation is hopeless, but continuation of present practices means a mighty river of money for the health care industry and fat donations to politicians. If you were serious about sparing the younger generation, you would at least be pushing for legally binding advance directives so that futile treatment can be refused in advance.

<In Australian public hospitals, according to a recent news report, 70% of the costs are for the last 6 months of life. In most cases it must also be obvious to all concerned that the situation is hopeless, but continuation of present practices means a mighty river of money for the health care industry and fat donations to politicians. If you were serious about sparing the younger generation, you would at least be pushing for legally binding advance directives so that futile treatment can be refused in advance.>
Posted by Divergence

People can already have a legally binding advance treatment plan.

Many of the private operators are already positioning themselves to take advantage of the increase in medical investigations that some of the baby boomer population will experience. This is particularly true of the private pathology services.

The US experience with private health operators, is that shareholders come before patients.

I beleive that we have a duty of care for the elderly, sure some treatments maybe inappropriate and sadly do little but extend suffering and cynically help fatten the wallets of those who order the treatments.

Having read a little bit of history one needs to ask what would happen today if something similar to the polio epedemic re-emerged. Would we put the resources in, or would the disease process be allowed to travel its natural course?