The Hunt report - Pointing out a roadmap to recovery

NOW that we function as a society only because of the very expensive kindness of strangers debates about access to services that might have once been little more than high-minded public discourse are likely to become the society-defining battlegrounds of the next decade.

Last week the reality of our out-of-kilter, dysfunctional and divisive health-funding policies came home to roost with the realisation that even those prepared to pay for health services on the double, through taxes and through private insurance, might no longer be able to afford the premium that ushered them through the dangerous bottlenecks in our hospitals.

The anger with a system, and a government, that cannot guarantee universal, immediate and reassuring access to health services deepened when tens of thousands of people realised they can no longer afford the insurance cover they feel they need to cope with a fragmented and unreliable system.