Letter

In response to Strengthening Medicare shouldn’t ignore the Australians who rely on private heal

Fix the system, not the insurance

Meg writes clearly about the dysfunction within our health system, but I think comes up with solution which addresses the symptoms, not the causes.

Were we to have a government….any government …that had a clue about the need to address our civilian infrastructure needs, rather than the Pirates of Penzance style focus on imagined foreign threats confected by the spooks in ASIO, we might actually address the problem.

The truth is the country we are being conditioned to fear has a hospital system where the patients, instead of getting on a queue of months or years to access health care can access that care on the day that the need arises. That is because they figured out decades ago that these needs of their people trump posturing on the international stage with promises of submarines that will cost the earth but never arrive. Just build and staff the bloody hospitals we need for an ageing population!!!

— Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041