Saw a thread this week from someone in Perth with the flu, needing a medical certificate, and running into the particular indignity of modern Australian healthcare: you’re too contagious to sit in a GP waiting room, but somehow not too contagious to be denied a bulk billed appointment. The pharmacist charged them fifty bucks for a certificate. Fifty dollars, to confirm what a rapid test already told them, so they could keep their job.

Saw the headline this week: scientists reckon we might be able to grow new teeth within four years. Not dentures, not implants, actual teeth, grown fresh, courtesy of some clever work with stem cells and tooth buds happening in Japan. My first reaction was genuine interest. My second reaction, about four seconds later, was a very specific kind of tiredness.

Because I’ve heard this before. Not this exact claim, but the shape of it. Flying cars by 2000. A cure for Alzheimer’s “within a decade” since roughly the Howard government. Stem cell tooth regeneration specifically, promised to a Reddit user’s dentist twenty years ago, who was “certain” it would be sorted by now. It wasn’t. There’s a whole genre of science journalism that lives in this four-to-five-year window, close enough to feel real, far enough away that nobody has to be accountable when it doesn’t happen on schedule.

I got my eyes tested a couple of years back at one of the big chains, the kind with a name you’d recognise from a shopping strip anywhere in the country. Decent enough experience, except the bit at the end where the optometrist pivoted, almost mid-sentence, into asking if I’d considered a second pair for “screen use.” I hadn’t. I still don’t own one. But I remember thinking, at the time, that it felt a bit like buying a car. Nice chat about the engine, then straight into the finance options.

So apparently NYC hospitals have been sharing patient health data with Palantir, and they’ve only just decided to stop. And the reaction from most people online was essentially: they were doing WHAT?

Yeah. That tracks.

For those who don’t know much about Palantir, they’re a US data analytics company with some genuinely unsettling associations — they’ve done work for ICE, assisted with surveillance operations, and their CEO is about as MAGA as it gets. To be fair, someone in the online discussion I was reading pointed out they also do legitimately useful things like tracking missing children and tracing food contamination outbreaks. But that’s the uncomfortable reality of dealing with companies like this — the good and the bad come bundled together, and you don’t always get to pick which parts you’re funding or feeding.

There’s a running joke in the Type 1 diabetes community that’s been going strong for at least two decades: “Don’t worry, a cure is just five years away!” It’s become such a reliable punchline that you could set your watch by it, except the watch never actually reaches zero.

So when I saw headlines about Stanford scientists curing Type 1 diabetes in mice—quickly followed by similar news from China—my immediate reaction was somewhere between cautious optimism and weary cynicism. The comments section on one discussion thread captured this perfectly, with someone who’s lived with T1 for 48 years wryly noting they’ve been hearing about that five-year timeline their entire adult life.

There’s a conversation happening right now that’s making a lot of people uncomfortable, and it needs to be had. I’ve been watching the NDIS debate unfold over the past few years, and what started as a genuinely progressive piece of social policy is turning into something that’s distorting our entire labour market in ways I don’t think anyone anticipated.

Three mates leaving their trades to become disability support workers. That’s not an isolated incident – it’s a trend. And while I’m all for people having career choices and disabilities being properly supported, something’s fundamentally broken when an auto mechanic or plumber can earn more taking someone to play bingo than they can after years of developing a skilled trade.

I’ve been following this fascinating development in healthcare where AI is essentially fighting AI, and it’s got me thinking about what happens when technology becomes the weapon of choice on both sides of a battle.

The story goes like this: health insurance companies are increasingly using AI to screen prior authorization requests, which many doctors believe is contributing to more claim denials. But here’s where it gets interesting - patients and healthcare providers are now turning to AI tools to fight back, essentially creating an algorithmic arms race in the world of health insurance.

Finally, some truly meaningful action on healthcare access! The Labor government’s $8.5 billion Medicare announcement marks the most significant investment in our public health system since its creation. Making GP visits free for most Australians isn’t just good policy – it’s transformative.

The timing of this announcement has attracted some cynicism, with critics dismissing it as pre-election vote-buying. But honestly, when a government actually delivers something that makes life better for everyday people, I’m not going to complain about the timing. This is exactly the kind of policy that built modern Australia.

The recent news about healthcare insurance companies rushing to scrub their leadership pages from their websites would be almost comical if it weren’t so tragically emblematic of corporate America’s approach to problem-solving. Rather than addressing the underlying issues that led to this violent incident, they’re attempting to hide behind digital walls.

Working in tech, I’ve seen countless examples of security theater - implementing superficial measures that create an illusion of security without addressing core problems. Removing executive profiles from websites while their names remain readily available through SEC filings, LinkedIn profiles, and countless other public sources is exactly that - a performative gesture that solves nothing.

Reading about Healthscope’s new hospital facility fee this morning made my blood boil. The announcement of an additional $100 charge for overnight patients and $50 for day patients feels like another brick in the increasingly unstable wall of private healthcare.

Sitting in my home office, sipping my morning coffee from my favourite Carlton café, I pondered the state of our healthcare system. The latest fee announcement from Healthscope particularly stings because it comes barely a year into their multi-year contracts with insurers like Bupa. It’s worth noting that behind this decision stands Brookfield, a Canadian investment giant that now owns Healthscope.