Instead of replying to the details of the Rudd-Swan Budget, I decided this year to use their backward-looking, future-phobic presentation as the launching pad for a broader discussion of what we might do if we had a Government with the vision and guts necessary to take on the twin challenges of climate change and peak [...]

The term 'primary health care' is commonly used interchangeably with 'primary care'. But, strictly speaking, primary health care is a strategy of public health, while primary care is usually taken to mean the first point of entry into the health system, generally for someone who is sick and seeking treatment or assistance. It is a problem for health care reform in Australia that these two approaches are often run together.

Last year Paul Norton wrote with some sadness and much asperity “Is David Burchell brain-dead?”

Referring to the particular column which prompted the post, Paul contrasted ex-communist Burchell’s stance with the positions taken by anti-communist Robert Manne thusly:

David Burchell’s column, by contrast, repeatedly trivialises left-liberal positions on those issues and complacently denigrates those who hold such views.

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Ideological intransigence - as displayed at the 2020 ‘Health’ Summit - won’t relieve the pressures on younger generations as the population ages.

I posted recently on the booming market in Thai exports of health services. Americans and Europeans are travelling in droves to Thailand to take advantage of lower costs of health services there. I sent a copy of the post to a well-known Australian trade theorist and his immediate response was – why doesn’t Australia get in on this act? Read more »