So the health reform process has come down to a good old-fashioned Commonwealth-State bunfight over money. Now there’s a surprise. The people may be different, but it’s all rather reminiscent of the Premiers’ Conferences of old. We could almost be watching footage of Neville Wran walking up the steps of Old Parliament House, perhaps having jetted back to Canberra after Treasurer John Howard admitted there was still some extra money left over that he hadn’t given the states, or Bob Hawke chipping “the new boy” Nick Greiner for being a smartarse.

Ah, yes, for those of you too young to remember, we used to go through this rubbish every year. All the posturing and chest-beating and theatrics, before the PM, the Treasurer and the Premiers would go into the Cabinet Room and thrash out a deal over money. The same talking points from back then about “constructive debate” and “frank discussions” are still in use, although Joh Bjelke-Petersen always had his own particular method of expressing himself.

As the Premier with the lowest levels of support, both generally and on her Government’s handling of health, Kristina Keneally was not in a particularly strong position to stand on the complex principle of GST allocation. She duly caved this morning, leaving John Brumby and Colin Barnett to front the cameras as the last of the recalcitrants. For the sake of appearances, they insisted a deal was in reach if everyone compromised just a little bit more.  By ‘everyone’, of course, they meant the Commonwealth.

Like revenge, it’s best to get your spinning in first, particularly if things look like they could go pear-shaped.

The Prime Minister’s idea of compromise has been to write out more cheques, billions of dollars worth, locking the Commonwealth in to substantial funding commitments far into the future. Most of this money will go into a health system that is functioning perfectly well, and into urban and suburban hospitals that might have a bad reputation with voters but which work very well be world standards. The health services available to urban Australians will improve still further compared to what’s available to the real priority users of the health system, indigenous people and rural and regional communities.

At least much of the $1.2b of (yet more) additional funding announced yesterday will be aimed at increasing capacity for mental health services, the third of the real health priorities that have been overlooked in the whole debate.

But otherwise, Rudd’s munificence is another version of middle-class welfare, further improving the free, high-quality health services urban Australians get for free.  Whoever wins out of this, taxpayers will be the losers.