Should federal health funding be rigidly tied to head of population?

No it shouldn’t be, it should all be based on providing the same basic level of service to everyone in the country.

Having said that it suprises me the ACT is below ‘average’, I would have thought with our low population and the fact we provide service for much of southern NSW that we would be above the average.

probably wouldn’t work in regional areas with sparely distributed populations. For example, there are probably economies of scale in terms of the physical health infrastructure as well as the professionals that staff them. It is probably cheaper per head of population to provide health infrastructure in a densely populated area like Canberra where it’s relatively easy to attract health professionals to live and work, compared to rural or regional areas. So the result would be much lower levels of services in those areas. Whether that’s an appropriate outcome or not I don’t know.

Welcome to living in a rusted-on Labor town…

“Should federal health funding be rigidly tied to head of population?”
Of course it should, but since:
A: there’s no votes from the rest of the country for helping Canberrans.
B: Canberra won’t every vote out it’s Labor MP’s, let alone over a single issue.
the government gains absolutely nothing for fixing the problem, and I’d suspect the state governments of NSW and Victoria (who’d probably benefit most from the existing system) might kick up a stink.
Only thing would be if the problem of people not being registered or whatever significantly affects say, Queensland, SA or WA in which case maybe there might be some incentive.

(for B: okay – unless it’s a bi-election for an unpopular government and the sitting MP has stepped down over corruption, in which case they’ll vote them out then vote the ALP back in at the next general election)