Medical Care, If You Can Pay for It In case you weren't listening in the lead-up to last year's September election, Tony Abbott promised no fundamental changes to, among other things, Medicare. In case you were dropped on your head as a child, Tony Abbott was lying. Today we have proof. Health Minister Peter Dutton, one of John Howard's henchmen prior to the 2007 election that saw the exit of the Liberals from government, has announced: "one important job of the Abbott Government is to grow the opportunity for those Australians who can afford to do so to contribute to their own healthcare costs." No, really, he said "grow the opportunity." What he means, of course, is that Medicare is not going to be universal health care in Australia anymore. It will be user-pays. Now, keep in mind that we already all pay a tax levy to fund Medicare, and that this levy, in the last, Labor, goverment, became means-tested (so that those "who can afford to do so" are already paying more to fund heathcare costs - not just for themselves, but for the whole country; and that, under Howard, it became compulsory to hold private health care insurance, the premiums for which are regularly approved for substantial increases. But we're going to "grow the opportunity" to pay more - not for the country overall, but for our "own healthcare costs." I do not object to paying taxes. Taxes are a public good and the price of living in a society. The society I joined has an admirable universal healthcare provision and a healthcare system that is second to none. But user-pays is the US model, pre-Obamacare (and post, pending refinements I'm sure a vast number of Americans are looking forward to under next-President Clinton), and it is the very model of unsustainable. If healthcare costs are indeed rising at unsustainable rates for Medicare, it's not Medicare that's the problem: it's the healthcare system. We need better, smarter care, not just more and paying more for it. In this latest example, Abbott and his ministers yet again prove they have no idea of the role of government, no vision, and nothing but their own pre-formed opinions on which to develop policy. We have a great opportunity to model significant advances in healthcare, but all they can think to do is to gut the system. Howard wanted an end to Medicare as much as he wanted an end of labor unions. He couldn't get it done. Abbott is well on his way to reducing the power of workers in favour of employers, and now he's proposed to complete the job of eliminating Medicare. Australia will never be the same if we let this happen.