John Menadue still carries a sharp image in his head of the night in Melbourne, 47 years ago, when Medibank began crystallising as an idea for Labor. It was a crisp July winter's evening in Kew, and gathered around a log fire at the home of left-leaning medico, Dr Moss Cass, were then opposition leader Gough Whitlam, Menadue (at that time Whitlam's aide), Cass and two health economists who'd become the architects of Australia's universal health care system, Dr John Deeble and Dick Scotton. Deeble and Scotton had been researching ways to make health insurance - then voluntary and fragmented - more readily available and affordable to the great mass of Australians. Gough Whitlam, Kay...
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