Universal care is still a noble target - Confusing health cover costs

OUR hit-and-miss, two-tier health system has been at the very centre of public debate and frustration for decades. 

Grand, determined efforts at reform — like the last Government’s promised but quietly forgotten universal health care, struggled to get out of the starting blocks much less make the finishing line. So great is the challenge that the office of minister for health has become the apex rite of passage for those with the highest political ambitions. The Maasai once sent young men to kill a lion with a spear before they could be recognised as a warrior, we send young, promising politicians to Hawkins House — and the lion wins more often than not.

This unevenness, the dreaded prospect of waiting months, sometimes, indeed too often, years, for an appointment to see a specialist in a public setting is a gold-plated gift to the health insurance industry. The fear, the uncertainty and vulnerability these delays can provoke, means that more or less anyone who can afford health insurance buys it — irrespective of suggestions that it may be unnecessary.