Ross Gittins has a nice piece criticising the government subsidy to private health insurance. My only quarrel is that the piece tends to perpetuate the assumption that an increase in the share of GDP devoted to health is a bad thing. In the long run, the growth of the human services sector, including health and education is an inevitable and desirable structural change. It’s no different in principle from the growth of manufacturing relative to agriculture in the first half of the 20th century and the growth of ‘tertiary’ services like retailing and finance relative to manufacturing in the second.
Update Don Arthur correctly points out that ‘more isn’t always better’. This is true of health care, but also of any area of expenditure, from food to financial services. It doesn’t justify the common practice of treating increases in the share of GDP going to health as being, in itself, a Bad Thing.