I think the present system of subsidising the health system has been fantastic. I think it's high time we modell housing commission systems on the template provided by fuhrer howard and abott.

First the  federal gov. offers 30% tax rebate to all those who pay their own rent. To bad if your poor and you live in a tent - it's the middle class that counts.

Second you incentivise all State government housing commission departments to sublet their publicly owned assets to real estate agents to the highest bidder. Which allows them to turn a profit. Which then offsets any cost involved in allowing stupid poor people to live in low-cost housing at the public's expense. In fact as the implementation of the new scheme is implemented you can further sublet housing commission flats and houses when stupid poor people move out of their own volition.
If it happens that you are receiving a 30% tax rebate and you rent one of the now converted housing commission rentals - all the better. As long as the middle class are cushioned from the free market economy and the real estate companies are turning a profit.....
The real estate companies would make a motza, the shareholders would be ecstatic and the total cost overhead for providing low-cost housing commission tenements would fall to a negligible cost, if not total zero cost......

and of course the major beneficiaries would be an improvement in the private sector economy where we so much more need to improve the bottom line - each and every year.....

otherwise what would the shareholders think of us?????

whaddyathink? a vote winner at the next election to buy those 'mum and dad' middle class investors who couldn't give a flying fig for the poor and needy in our society?

or how about we rethink the whole medical/healthcare system?

instead of the public health care system providing facilities for doctors and nurses (who are willing to put in the hard yards ie low wages ) which is simply an infrastructure that is provisioning referrals to privately run diagnostic businesses, where huge profits are being generated and which is NOT covered by health insurance we turn the system on it's head.

An alternative would be to use the hospitals as a structure to house all the diagnostic equipment which is the key to providing the timely information needed by specialists who can then make decisions (triage) upon which patients are most urgently needing medical intervention.

If the government was to invest heavily into high tech diagnostic services and provide them for free through the public health system it would drive down the profiteering being made by the privately run diagnostic services - which are in the main just another business arm of the corporatist religious organisations - once the profit had dried up from running these essential services for modern preventative medicine ie if doctors can quickly and easily diagnose potential medical illnesses then the total overall costs involved in curing a patient can be reduced to the bare minimum.

but as long as there is no market force to bring down the profiteering occurring in the field of medical diagnostic services then our health system will continue to pour needless bllions into subsidising health care rebates for bloated insurance companies getting fatter and fatter every year while the tax payer funded rebates for medical health insurance continues.

It would also drive down the need for long term recuperative care as it follows that if a disease is caught early through quick and effective ie free diagnostic services then attendant costs would also be driven down.

it works for breast cancer screening, prostrate screening, why not all the other types of diagnostic services for all the other potential diseases that can be cured if caught in it's early stages through utilising hi-tech medical diagnostic equipment and services???