On 7/07/2016 10:47 AM, David Boxall wrote: > I get the feeling that past generations recognised value beyond > short-term return on investment. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, for > example, eventually paid off the debt incurred in its construction, > but its value to the city and the nation remains far greater than its > price. > > Overall, the road network doesn't pay the costs of building and > maintenance, but its value is far more than its price. The same can > probably be said of most, if not all, infrastructure. That's probably > why involving the private sector is generally disastrous. That sector > needs short-term return on its investment, which natural-monopoly > infrastructure will not deliver.
Value and cost often bear little relationship to each other. The My Health Record has cost over $2billion so far. If its value is in how much money it has saved in the delivery of health care (which is a much more meaningful measure than the number of registrations or uploads) then the value is approaching zero. According to data from www.myhealthrecord.gov.au The proportion of the population with a clinical health summary is 0.006% The proportion of the population with a consumer entered health summary is 0.0025% If they have 50% compound growth over the next 15 odd years, they'll get to 1% of the population having a clinical health summary. And the costs will have got up by about another $200million (based upon the current contract to support the system) and this doesn't take into account the costs to the medical profession/industry of entering and curating the data. At least some people are getting some value out of the NBN. So far, AFAIK, nobody has ever downloaded a myhealthrecord and used it to improve health care. And they have the gall to claim the MyHR is "infrastructure". > > Conservatives, in particular, have great difficulty perceiving value. > Cost therefore looms disproportionately large. Conservatives of the > past had more courage. They conquered their fears and got things done. > Sadly, today's Conservatives have degenerated to timid ineffectuality. And hubris. -- Regards brd Bernard Robertson-Dunn Sydney Australia email: b...@iimetro.com.au web: www.drbrd.com web: www.problemsfirst.com Blog: www.problemsfirst.com/blog _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link