Australia's health care costs are rising faster than any other OECD country.

This is why federal Health Minister Tony Abbott is warning Australians to brace themselves for yet another increase in health insurance premiums.

So, what can be done to solve the problem? A lot, according to Dr Rob Moodie of the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.

Tomorrow, he will deliver a dynamite paper at a health industry roundtable in Melbourne held by the Australian Institute of Health Policy Studies.

To make his point that most developed countries have got their priorities wrong in health care funding, Moodie will expand on the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

More and more is being spent on medical treatment and pharmaceutical drugs, with proportionately less being spent on preventing people needing treatment in the first place.

It just doesn't make sense, either morally or financially.

We know that health promotion campaigns can be stunningly effective. Countries such as Finland have managed to reduce early mortality rates by 45 per cent, solely due to health promotion measures. Twenty-five years of informing the public about healthy living has increased the life expectancy of Finnish men by seven years and women by six years.

The United States managed to reduce the prevalence of smoking from 41.9 per cent of its population in 1965 to 23.1 per cent in 2000. In Australia in 1998 alone, it is estimated that 17,400 premature deaths were averted because of tobacco control efforts.

Financial savings were put conservatively at a staggering $12.3 billion.

But the news is not all good regarding our expenditure on smoking control.

Dr Moodie raises the interesting question of why the Federal Government in 2001 chose to spend $80 million subsidising the anti-smoking drug Zyban, when 80 per cent of patients did not finish their treatment.

The Government neglected to spend $10 million repeating the successful national tobacco campaign when there was hard evidence it would have been far more effective in getting people to quit smoking.

The result? A glut of precious taxpayer dollars being wasted along with many, many lives.

As our health budget chews up increasing billions of dollars, many have swallowed the argument that rising costs are mainly due to our ageing population and increasingly expensive medical treatments.

Myth, says Moodie. Chronic diseases don't just affect the elderly and many are entirely preventable.

The fact is we are fast becoming a nation of fat, indolent, wheezing boozers who rely on prescription drugs and medical technology to prolong our unhealthy lifestyles.

So, what is standing in the way of disease prevention?

Let's start at the top. It's not so long ago that the Federal Government spent up big sending us all fridge magnets as part of its war on terrorism.

Yet, it is far more likely we will die prematurely from stocking our fridges with grog and fatty, sweetened, processed food than from any terrorist's bomb.

You don't need to be a political analyst to realise that it is politically sexier and a bigger vote-winner to scare us about terrorism than to educate us about the dangers of poor nutrition.

Which brings us to big business. The most lucrative global businesses today are military weaponry, pharmaceutical drugs, tobacco, alcohol and manufactured foods, all of which have a huge impact on public health.

Yet with the limited exception of the tobacco industry, which continues to survive, the powers that be are proving highly reluctant to impinge upon the market freedoms enjoyed by these economically powerful industries.

This is because while public health campaigns cut Government expenditure, they are unlikely to boost the profits of an industry, which spends great amounts on marketing its unhealthy products.

Dr Moodie draws attention to the role of commercial television in public health and the breathtakingly honest views of one Patrick Le May, MD of Television France Une.

It confirms everything I have most loathed about my own experiences of commercial television.

As Le May puts it, the role of his television station is, for example, to help Coca Cola to sell their product.

Fair enough, but how? By making the brain of the TV viewer empty, thus preparing it for the ads. What Le May brazenly declares he is selling to Coca-Cola is empty brain time.

Australia operates a largely self-regulated system of advertising regarding the alcohol and manufactured-food industries and they are running rampant.

Along with warning us that insurance premiums will soon rise, Tony Abbott is refusing to heed the calls for curbs on junk food advertising during children's television programs.

People should be free to make their own mistakes, the minister reckons.

Tosh. If Tony Abbott really believes this, why doesn't he restore the ability of the tobacco industry to advertise?

It is nonsense to claim that regulating junk food advertising won't help solve our obesity crisis.

But if advertisements don't work, then why do they exist?

The truth is that keeping us fat, drunk, legally doped, sick and at war is a highly profitable game for private industry, which comes at great cost to the public purse and health.

And it will take a braver health minister than Tony Abbott to do anything about it.

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