Prospective health care policies are always a contentious issue at stake in elections, particularly at the federal level. Labor is renowned for its pledge to invest further in public hospitals and medicare, but the Coalition has also recently promised in its budget to allocate hundreds of millions towards Medicare and to lift the freeze on all GP services on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Other issues at stake include the provision of mental health services, disability services, and a proposition by Labor to implement a ‘cancer plan’ to ease the cost of services for cancer patients. We were joined by Stephen Duckett, Director of the Health Program at the Grattan Institute, to discuss the implications of some of the proposed health care policies.