John Deeble, the “father of Medicare”, has died aged 87.
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The Canberra-based professor co-authored with Dr Dick Scotton the original proposals for universal health insurance in Australia in 1968.
This work led to the establishment of Medicare in its original guise of Medibank during the term of the Whitlam government.
Professor Deeble was later closely involved as the architect of the reintroduction of universal healthcare in Australia, by then known as Medicare, in 1984.
Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association chief executive Alison Verhoeven announced Professor Deeble’s death on Tuesday.
He was Patron of the Deeble Institute for Health Policy Research, the association’s research arm.
Association board chair Deborah Cole said Professor Deeble would be remembered for his “generosity, integrity, ingenuity and persistence”.
“He was an apolitical academic who, once he had identified a solution to a problem, regarded policy and advocacy as part of the job. He was a crusader against social injustice,” she said.
“There was a familiar pattern to all of his work: he would identify emerging problems; follow up with extensive data collection and analysis; then formulate policy responses that fitted the facts rather than pre-conceived positions.”
Dr Cole said that in later years Professor Deeble studied the deteriorating building and equipment capital stock of public hospitals.
“Because it was becoming a problem, he developed a methodology for valuing and depreciating the useable life of hospital buildings and equipment.
“That is just typical of the many ways he applied his skills and ingenuity as a health economist and statistician on the national stage.
"It was an amazing life of achievement for a boy born in the Wimmera wheatfield town of Donald, not far from the South Australian border, and who left school at the age of 15."
Professor was most recently Emeritus Fellow of the Australian National University, a Sax Medallist and life member of the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association.
His other appointments included First Assistant Secretary in the Commonwealth Department of Health, Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and from 1989 to 2005, Senior Fellow in Epidemiology and Adjunct Professor in Economics at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the ANU.
During his career, he was Special Adviser to the ministers for health in the Whitlam and Hawke governments, chairman of the planning committees for both Medibank and Medicare and a commissioner of the Health Insurance Commission for 16 years.
He was also a World Bank Consultant on healthcare financing in Hungary, Turkey and Indonesia, and for more than10 years to 2005, an adviser to the government of South Africa.
