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I do not have to stop and think for even a moment about what one decision I've made in my life that I would change if only I could. If I could turn back the hands of time, I would change my mind about giving up private health insurance at some stage in the early to mid 90s. This one decision had such dire consequences for me as a mother, for my husband and I as parents, for our family - and most of all for our little girl who was born in March, 1998.

Here in Australia we have a Medicare system which covers the general population for an extensive range of health services. Nobody is excluded from its benefits. In many ways it works well and is undeniably one of the best health systems in the world - but it certainly has its limitations and failings - and an untold number of people are detrimentally affected by these in numerous ways.

When my husband and I married in 1990, we soon made the decision that we ought to invest in private health insurance. One reason was that we thought it may be to our benefit when we decided to start a family.

However, as time went by we still hadn't reached the point where we felt we were ready to have children. We were what was referred to as "DINKS" - which stood for "double income, no kids". Mind you, my income was relatively small as I only worked on a casual basis for some time - and then became a permanent part-time employee in the same position.

After a while I began to feel annoyed about the amount of money that we were sacrificing from my husband's pay for private health insurance. It seemed to be a total waste of money as we received next to no benefit from it. Doctor's appointments were covered by Medicare anyway and we hardly ever saw specialists. We hadn't needed it for hospital treatment and if we had to go to hospital at any stage, it was more than likely we would be admitted as public patients, covered by Medicare - which was the norm for most people.

I discussed this matter with others I worked with and I remember there was one person in particular who influenced me considerably in eventually suggesting to my husband that we ought not continue forking out for private health insurance. This was at a point where people were opting out of the health insurance funds in record numbers for the same reasons as we did. Since then there have been more people (like ourselves) taking on private health cover again for a variety of reasons.

When we did decide in late 1994 that we would like to start trying for a family, I took

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