After three months of physiotherapy and rest and exercises and anti-inflammatory tablets had failed to fix my injured knee, an MRI explained why: the outer cartilage was torn and the inner was tatty. I saw a surgeon last Wednesday and on Friday he repaired what was reparable and removed what was not.
 
 
The next day I sat on my couch in small pain, enjoying a liberal dose of self-pity. I had time and excuse to sit and live slowly. I read the ‘paper. A fellow citizen wrote to the editor in praise of Medicare, our universal health scheme. Her small daughter fell acutely ill and she hurried to the public hospital, where the waiting area was crowded and the public address announced the arrival of a series of ambulances. The delays would be long. However the sick child was assessed in Triage as urgent, was seen and treated expeditiously and expertly. By morning she was well enough to go home and her mother took up the pen in praise and thanksgiving. ‘How lucky we are’, she wrote, ‘to have such an excellent public health system.’
 
 
A second letter to the editor told the opposite tale. The writer suffered a limb injury and attended a public hospital. His injury was disabling and unremittingly painful. It was rapidly recognised as in need of early surgery. That was two years ago. His case is classified in the category of Most Urgent (elective). Every three months since he has returned to the hospital for routine appointments, where the diagnosis and the urgency are confirmed. His letter ends with a lament: ‘How can we kid ourselves we have a health scheme where Most Urgent can languish for years?’
 

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The writer and I both suffered injuries. Both of us received expert advice that surgery was necessary. Mine was performed within days, while my fellow languishes for years. My injury was minor but it did not feel trivial. For three months it hurt too much to run. I turned to the bike and the knee felt worse. Soon I could not walk without pain. I watched the muscles of my thighs wither and I lamented. Those legs had been my pride. I contemplated a life without exercise and I knew I would not know myself.
 
 
How is it my leg improves by the day while a fellow citizen suffers a worse problem and waits interminably? I cannot doubt the sufferer subsists on medication which is neither curative nor safe. By now he is surely addicted to his opiates. Why the disparity? The answer is my private health insurance, which, by dint of thrift and belief, I afford. Not everyone is so fortunate.
 
 
Even an unbleeding-hearted economic rationalist would see the disparity as just that, an inequality. I believe there is a solution which is not a new idea, but a forgotten one. I recall a politician by name of Don Chipp who became Minister for Health in the Liberal Government in the days before Medicare was sanctified, beatified and became untouchable. Facing the disparity, Chipp proposed government would underwrite the private health insurance of the poor. All citizens would be insured, all would enjoy choice of surgeon and hospital, the private health sector would expand and prosper through efficiencies that Public Health can never match, investors would rejoice and the Liberals would be congratulated in the polls. Meanwhile Most Urgent Surgery (elective) would be performed within a humane frame of time.
 
 
That scheme, which bore some resemblance to Obama Care, never came to pass. Labor rejected the necessary Means Test as ideologically repugnant. Chipp moved out of his party and created a third force in politics, which soon became a chronic and disabling pain to Liberal governments. Decades later my fellow citizen, uninsured privately, suffers privately, where he could be cured.