Premier Peter Beattie in Quensland announced last Thursday that Queensland's health system had "turned the corner". It's a joke isn't it.

Leahy

How can such a dysfunctionalsystem be turned around so quickly with a promise of cash and more doctors from full feeing paying courses? Secondly, have not voters lost confidence in the Beattie's Government ability to "fix" Queensland Health? The glossy Team Beattie, who basically see themselves as administrators and managers, have moved into election mode.

Are we not also losing patience with Tony --'-my job is to fix the problems'--- Abbott, and his resistance to health care reform, and his unwilllingness to make the shift from linking government spending decisions to looking after doctors to spending money to look after patients?

We have problems: allocative inefficiency, poor use of information technology, lack of competition, cost shifting and buck passing, narrow models of health care, medical dominance, too much focus on chronic disease in hospitals etc. We have an ageing population and a disintegrating public health system. Where's the fixer? Is it not a myth--that a health minister can "fix" the problems in the health care system? How can we fix a situation where 2 out very 3 Australians court diabetes and heart disease by being overweight?

Even the Australian Financial Review is argues that the problem solving approach of the fixers is wrong:

Health care ashould be as much about encouraging people to adopt healther lifestyles as about treatign their ailments. The present model where---where doctors and hospitals keeping meeting demand instead of trying to stem it at its source---doesn't address this need.