Following John Menadue’s refection on 50 years of Medicare this week, many have raised the contribution of John Deeble. Below is an edited version of a 2018 tribute to the man without whom the scheme would not have been possible.

Every Australian owes a great debt to John Deeble who died this week in Canberra, aged 87. Together with Dick Scotton he provided Gough Whitlam from 1967 onwards with the essential advice on how to establish a compulsory public insurance health program Medicare. The result was Gough Whitlams triumph in government on 7 August 1974, in a joint sitting of the parliament, to establish Medicare. The scheme started on 1 July 1975 when Medicare cards were issued to all Australians.

We now have one of the best health schemes in the world, although it clearly needs renovation. Without John Deeble it is hard to visualise how Medicare would have been possible.

In opposition Gough Whitlam was always exploring new policy options for Australia across a whole range of activities. He had naturally been attracted to the success of the British National Health Service but a similar health program in Australia at the federal level with the direct employment of doctors and nurses was really out of the question because of the conservative majority on the Australian High Court in the interpretation of the Constitution.

So Gough Whitlam welcomed the meeting with John Deeble and Dick Scotton in Melbourne because it offered a potential way around the constitutional barrier by offering a public health insurance scheme.

Gough Whitlam was also attracted by John Deeble and Dick Scotton because they were both health economists and understood the costs and economic consequences of a new health scheme. The Department of Health at that time, like the department still in Australia today, lacked competence in health economics.

John Deeble was an academic in Melbourne who had heart-felt concerns about the social and personal costs of poor health in the community. He was forthright about social injustice in health. He was also realistic about the messy world of politics and the compromises that Whitlam and later Hawke had to make.

After the establishment of Medicare by Whitlam and Hayden in 1975, and its wind back by the Fraser Government, it was reinstated by Hawke and Blewett in February 1984.

John Deeble continued to advise governments on health policy. He was a Commissioner of the Health Insurance Commission (Medicare) for sixteen years. Because he was interested in health data and health economics he was the founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. From 1989 to 2005 he was Senior Fellow in Epidemiology and Adjunct Professor in Economics at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the ANU.

Until his health deteriorated, I spoke to him regularly and sought his advice. I recall two particular concerns and interests he had.

The first was that the growth of government-subsidised private health insurance was a looming threat to Medicare. But he did have pleasure in savouring the ever-growing public subsidy for PHI so that at an appropriate time it could be transferred, with minimal political risk, to other important parts of the health sector.

The second was that the ALP had made little contact with him in the last decade or so when he clearly still had so much more to offer. The failure to properly consult John Deeble explains, at least in part, why the ALPs health policy has continued in the doldrums for so many years.

The country boy from Donald in Victoria has given great service to Australia. He designed, implemented and then defended Medicare for over 50 years.