Over 120 Aboriginal communities run their own health services - some have been doing so for 30 years. They struggle with difficult medical problems. They also try to deal with counselling stolen generations issues family relationships violence suicide prevention.

And under the existing circumstances I understand there are situations where people indeed need care and need services but I believe in America that the majority of those people are getting those services under situations and circumstances that are afforded to them by their health care providers and their state government.

Prevention is one of the few known ways to reduce demand for health and aged care services.

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

The accumulation of numbers always augments in some measure moral corruptions and the consequences to health of the various vices incident thereto are well known.

The only truly individualistic health-care choice - where you receive care that is unpolluted by anyone else's funds - is to forgo insurance altogether paying out-of-pocket for health services as you need them.

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios and the long legislative battles over health care reform financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues as disease is far more contagious than health.

One lesson that every nation can learn from China is to focus more on creating village-level enterprises quality health services and educational facilities.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.