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WHATEVER its shortcomings in concrete achievements, the current round of health reforms has set new records for hyperbole. Launching “the biggest health reform since Medicare” last year, Kevin Rudd declared that “the days of incremental reform are over.” Julia Gillard’s version, signed off by the assembled premiers and chief ministers at the Council of Australian Governments meeting on Sunday, was pared-down and more limited, but the rhetorical claims remained high: “We are sweeping away those eight separate bureaucracies for one national funding body,” the prime minister announced. And although the broad details were still a mystery, the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, denounced “an historic capitulation on what the government was proposing. This is the biggest surrender since Singapore.”
