There is a very good reason why a country's healthcare system shouldn't be about so-called 'choices' instead of providing all people with public-funded healthcare that allows everyone to receive a consistently high level of care: it's because so many people are left with no choice at all. John Howard's progressive, insidious remodelling of Australia's world class public health care system to more closely resemble that of the US has taken us down a path toward a world where a cancer diagnosis can mean losing your house and your life savings in an attempt to save your life. Where people desperate for basic medical and dental care will queue for hours to receive help in a third-world style mobile clinic staffed by volunteers. I highly recommend the New York Times photo gallery in the previous link. The old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words rings very true for some of the content in that gallery.
Rich people, or people with no real health worries might like to talk about 'choice'- anyone with a brain in their head and a little something that could be called a heart might like to wonder why it is that the US can afford to spend over one trillion dollars in Iraq and yet can't provide its people with even half decent health care. Or why Dubya's deputy-sheriff John Howard can spend $400 million in a single year sending Australian troops in to support Bush's war, when the money could have been better spent on our own hospital system. Or, for that matter, Iraq's hospital system, for all the good Howard's expenditure on this war has done us. At least we could have used it to do good for someone else, instead of taking part in turning Iraq into a shithole.
I don't know how much we can expect from Labor in terms of repairing Australia's hospital system, but at least after next saturday we may no longer have a leader ideologically bent on its destruction.
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