Prof Dr HHH’s brilliant and brief “Four-Step Healthcare Solution” deserves pride of place in any archive of healthcare proposals, even this archive of never-republished pieces by high-profile Australians.

You say, “Healthcare is a right.” Very emotive language! To return the favour: you are saying that paying for your health problems requires forcing others to fund it; that is, partially enslaving those you demand to fund/subsidise you. More strategic breaking of socialistic health taboos below.

  1. Is free priceless healthcare worthless? — Bert Kelly, “The fruit of specialist sideboards,” The Australian Financial Review, March 30, 1972, p. 3.
  2. Bert Kelly, “We’re quick to get sick of socialism,” The Australian Financial Review, November 23, 1973, p. 3.
  3. Should free universal healthcare include pets? — Bert Kelly, “Let’s try it on Fido, says Mavis,” The Australian Financial Review, June 27, 1975, p. 3.
  4. Bert Kelly to blame for soaring healthcare costs — Bert Kelly, “This solution to Medibank ‘too simple’,” Country Life, August 25-31, 1976, p. 44.
  5. Bert Kelly, “Health cover needs a $30 excess clause,” The Australian Financial Review, June 10, 1977, p. 3.
  6. John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), p. 3, under the heading “AAA Tow Truck Co.” Excerpt: “You walk along the road minding your own business and you get hit by a truck. Five minutes later, eight tow trucks arrive on the scene competing to see who can tow the truck away. Half an hour later, the police arrive to work out whether it was your fault or the truck’s fault. And two hours later (after you’re history department) the ambulance arrives to see if it can be of any assistance …”
  7. Singo and Howard Expose how Government Healthcare Controls Legislate Doctors into Slavery — John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 119-21, under the heading “Health”. Excerpt: “It cannot be said if a government is elected by popular vote on the platform of providing a comprehensive health scheme that it has a ‘mandate’ to do so. The most that could be said is that it has a right to organise one for those who specifically voted for it, and only at their expense.”
  8. Singo and Howard Join Forces to Dismantle Welfare State — John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 267-73, under the heading “Welfare”. Excerpt: “No one has a right to welfare, because all welfare is paid for by other people. To admit such a right would, to that extent, turn those who pay it into slaves.”
  9. John Singleton sacked for telling the truth about Medicare — John Singleton Advertising full page ad for Western District Health Fund, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 2, 1986, p. 11.
  10. Maxwell Newton, “Wastage of the Welfare State a national disgrace,” The Weekend Australian, June 14-15, 1980, p. 16. Excerpt: “A torrent of Commonwealth money has merely flooded away what pockets of efficiency there were in the Adelaide hospitals system and has left a vast flood plain of destruction, twisted trees, dead bodies and filthy stinking waste.”
  11. Aspiring to senility and the old-age pension — Robert Haupt on smoking and drinking: “The New Puritans lie in wait for the New Lepers,” The Sydney Morning Herald, May 5, 1984, p. 40; “Stop the boos about booze,” Good Weekend: The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine, November 17, 1984, p. 14; “The warning may be the hazard,” National Times on Sunday, September 14, 1986, p. 12; and “A creed of wellness up with which I will not put,” The Sydney Morning Herald, April 22, 1988, p. 15.
  12. Viv Forbes, “Trapped in the dole queues,” The Weekend Australian, April 19-20, 1986, p. 16, as a letter to the editor. See also: Viv Forbes, “Healing thyself,” The Australian, January 11, 1979, p. 6, as a letter to the editor; and Jim Fryar, “Bedevilled,” The Australian, January 29, 1979, p. 6, as a letter to the editor.
  13. Colin Clark, “Ending the Welfare State,” Quadrant, November 1986, pp. 66-67. Excerpt: “But the average family cannot afford, we shall be told, to make provision for old age and widowhood, still less to pay for its health and education. What a nonsensical statement, when we come to look at it. The average family does pay for them now, pays for them out of taxation, a much more clumsy and costly way of providing them.” This essay also has Clark reminiscing about his personal correspondence with Keynes, where they agreed that taxation in excess of 25% of national income was inadvisable.
  14. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Wowsers abuse high ideals,” The Australian, May 29, 1991, p. 11. Opening line: “It is difficult not to get the impression sometimes that the opponents of smoking and drinking are slightly, or not so slightly, unbalanced.” Another excerpt: “The obvious answer is to ensure that you pay the costs of your own demands on the health system, through proper health insurance and full cost pricing of health and medical services. But it is absurd to set up a health system which will be abused and then punish people for behaviour which abuses it. This is entrapment.”
  15. Viv Forbes, “Smoking, Health and Freedom,” November 1991, from Viv’s private archives, written at the request of John Singleton. Excerpt: “Some may choose a life of moderation, abstinence, hard work and quiet devotion followed by a gentle expiry in bed after a day of weeding the roses. I’m not sure whether they will live a long life, but it will surely seem long. I respect their choice, but my preference is to be caught and shot by an irate husband at the age of 94.”
  16. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Youth victims of the welfare con,” The Australian, July 31, 1992, p. 11. Excerpt: “How far into the next century can the welfare State last? This is a question which once might have thought to be absurd — the welfare State surely was here to stay. But it may emerge that the next generation will see the welfare State as a gigantic swindle, a confidence trick by their parents.” And: “The cant phrase, ‘I’ve paid taxes all my life and now I’m entitled to the pension’, much heard on both sides of the Tasman, is the exact contrary to the truth.” And: “a nation of ageing parasites, wielding immense electoral clout, and pushing the burden of adjustment to a new and more competitive world on to the young, while still expecting them to finance the privileged position the young themselves will never enjoy.”
  17. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Warning: health is a budget hazard,” The Weekend Australian, August 1-2, 1992, p. 2. Excerpt: “The ‘healthy’ activities, while they may avert heart disease and some other complaints, such as diabetes, will give rise to a new set of complaints among the spavined struldbrugs, as a result of the injury strains of football, netball, jogging, aerobics, etc. To relieve the demands on the healthcare system all the pleasurable activities that are unhealthy will be blamed — the witch-hunt against smokers and drinkers will redouble in ferocity. And yet, heavy smokers and drinkers are public benefactors — they contribute heavily to taxation revenue and shorten their lives (they more than pay for their demands on the health budget), thus relieving the future pressures and demands on the working-age generations.”
  18. The Paddy McGuinness diet — “Health fascists make a meal of latest diet statistics,” The Australian, June 24, 1993, p. 9; “New research indicates that a little of what is bad for you does you good,” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 29, 1995, p. 14; “One fat lady who knew how to live,” The Sydney Morning Herald, August 19, 1999, p. 17; and “Boo to body beautiful: eat, drink and be merry,” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 21, 2000, p. 10.
  19. Paddy McGuinness proposes inheritance tax equal to handouts received by deceased — “Take from the dead to give to the living,” The Weekend Australian, July 17-18, 1993, p. 2; “Tide starts to turn against reign of the baby boomers,” The Weekend Australian, December 11-12, 1993, p. 2; “Baby-boomers must pay their final dues,” The Sydney Morning Herald, April 27, 1996, p. 26; “Young to carry old tax burden,” The Sydney Morning Herald, July 27, 1996, p. 32; and “Why the buck stops at the nursing home,” The Sydney Morning Herald, November 8, 1997, p. 42.
  20. Padraic P. McGuinness, “The blight of the baby-boomers,” The Weekend Australian, February 5-6, 1994, p. 2.
  21. Do-gooders should glorify smokers — Padraic P. McGuinness, “Smokers need encouragement, not abuse,” The Australian, February 8, 1994, p. 48. Excerpt: “Those baby-boomers who have smoked heavily all their lives can even be considered as public benefactors. They have paid heavy taxes on their smokes all their lives, their life expectancy has been considerably shortened and, as a result, they will impose a much less burden on the young of the next generation than the fitness fanatics and the health fascists.” And: “smokers and drinkers paid over $2.5 billion in exchange for $1 billion of health and medical services necessitated by their vices.”
  22. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Class action may be smoking gun,” The Australian, March 1, 1994, p. 43.
  23. Expert healthy opinion on sugar — Bettina Arndt, “Don’t believe all that sweet talk,” The Sydney Morning Herald, October 28, 1998, p. 13; and a line from Carla Zampatti, My life, my look (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2016), p. 25.
  24. Hans Tholstrup, “Hans Tholstrup AM, practising libertarian, fights Medicare,” Economics.org.au, August 1, 2013. Excerpt: “It would be nice to die having taken nothing from Australia from the time I arrived as a young man from Denmark. Nothing, that is, apart from the opportunity Australia gave me.”

Lastly, during the 2016 Australian Federal Election, Labor ran a Mediscare campaign claiming that if the Liberals win, they would have a mandate to privatise Medicare, even though that was never in the works. Sam Kennard made the perfect observation when the Liberals won, that, although it was never their intention, now that Labor campaigned that they do have a mandate, they should go ahead and do it: