In Britain, Canada, Cuba, and France Private Health is a dirty word and the National Health Service is appreciated and the envy of the world. Here in Australia unfortunately we have the United States version and it is expected that if we want an education or treatment we accept that we have to pay for it. Why is this so because our Government subsidides Private Insurance to the detriment of Public Health. We have to pay for treatment if we want Dental, Periodontis treatment or Orthonditist Treatment and Podiatry because there is no provision within the Health Service. This is obscene and unacceptable but unfortunately we have all been brainwashed to accept this system. We need a Government that will give us a True National Health Service and A True Government School system where the taxpayer do not have to subsidise privat health and education to obtain something which is our right.

The last thing we need is a health system like the UK, a totally dysfunctional bureaucratic nightmare.

There is no doubt that the worst people to have organise anything are public servants. We all know that they are like rabbits, once you have one you will soon have 20.

I can not imagine a more inefficient system than paying one to take money out of my pay, one to put it into the bank, & yet another to pay my doctors bill. Then of course there'll be six more hidden in the shaddows, to supervise those three.

Just how long will it be before I get one of them to hold my hand, if I want to cross the road?

BRONCO....

HEALTH... I'm with you. But I would not prohibit private health, the focus of government should be on providing a workable good standard public health system. What people with more money than sense do about health is their business.

EDUCATION... I'm not quite with you there. Education impinges on the are of religion..and being Christian, I don't like some ideas being 'force fed' into the minds of impressionable faith based youth.

But I do support a good public education system.

So..no, they are not obscene, except where governments fail to provide us with the quality of both that our taxes surely can justify.

What do you know of the American health care system Bronco? I have lived there and I must say that if you are equating our health care system with theirs, then you know nothing. Theirs is quite a different system, expensive, constricting (some insurers will only give you rebates if you visit their chosen doctors) and stressful.

Ours is a two-tiered system, a hybrid if you will, it kind of sits between full public health and full private. There are a wide range of options available and it isn't too difficult to change insurers or to visit a doctor of your choice, except when using the public system, which you don't have to directly pay for anyway. We are fully covered in emergencies even when we don;t have private health and have options to upgrade our care when we do.

If you think our system is like the Americans, I repeat, you know nothing.

Only an uninformed person would compare our health system with America's.

Suggestions that we slip backwards into the welfare state model of the UK are purely political.

Emergency treatment at public hospitals is freely available to anyone. If people do not wish to insure their health, that's their business. But, it's too late to do a moan on A Currrent Affair of Today Tonight when they find out that they have to wait for hip replacements etc.

My 89 year old mother has top hospital cover, and still doesn'nt spend all of her pension.

No sympathy for those who prefer to spend on non-essentials before essentials.

The UK system has been multi-tiered for decades, as a result of market forces that had had enough of year-long queues for critical heart surgery. Far from being "a dirty word", private health cover is seen as an essential safety valve to the bureaucratic nightmare that is the NHS.

The growth of the private health part was supported by insurance - ever heard of BUPA, or PPP? These are the (very rough) equivalent of our private health funds, and operate as normal insurance companies. You pay a premium, and when you need access to hospital you get to "go private", and choose your physician and negotiate a private ward.

Interestingly, the uptake of these policies was driven in the seventies by corporations, looking for cheap ways to provide valuable perks to their employees. The company submitted a "profile" of their staff - this many under thirty, this many over fifty etc. - and the insurance company quoted.

Here we have a slightly different system for our private health insurance, known as "community rating". It works on the same principle as above, except that the entire population is risk-assessed. So in general terms, our youth is subsdizing our aged, which is entirely as it should be.

If the government had an iota of sense they'd make private health insurance exempt from FBT so that every business would ensure their people were covered.

But as someone who lost his father to the UK system of barbaric Public Health Service indifference, I put my monthly private health insurance premiums in the same spending category as food and shelter.

Philiosophically, much of our basic health needs should be provided as a public service. Unfortunately, in the same way that we are governed by politicians, nationalized services are run by bureaucrats.

Since the only thing a good bureaucrat knows is how to avoid making a decision just in case someone disagrees with it, a fully public health service is inevitably a recipe for disaster.

The principle is the same for private education.

Except for the insurance part, for which you substitute savings bonds.