Horst Herb wrote: > On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:37, Oliver Frank wrote: >> unique number assigned to each of us, within Medicare Australia, that >> does uniquely identify each of us, at least to the limits of the >> evidence of identity currently sought by Medicare Australia. > > only to some degree, and only useful to those who actually hold a medicare > card, which is only a subset of Australian residents and a subset of our > regular patients. > > An identification system would begin being useful if it would at least > encompass all Australian residents; would cause enough trouble and exceptions > already dealing with tourists.
Yes, all of which I mentioned... David More keeps saying that a national healthcare identifier is vastly expensive. All I am saying is that we already have one which is 80% of the way there. OK, Pareto's rule applies, and closing the remaining 20% gap will cost more than the first 80%, but it can be done. As Horst has pointed out, Norway does it, as do several other countries. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
