And then, afterwards, disability, with roughly half becoming dependent on carers and nearly 40 per cent of those who've had a stroke dying within a year. So this is why mechanical thrombectomy's a thing. Imagine a tiny, amazing hook that basically travels up an artery into, say, the brain, scoops up a blood clot and removes it whole.

Or, if you prefer, it's an endovascular tool cleared to remove thrombi from the neurovasculature in acute ischemic stroke patients, particularly appropriate for individuals with large, proximal intracranial artery occlusions. If that makes sense, you'll probably also be aware that time is critical, because only a narrow window exists for restoration of cerebral blood flow using reperfusion therapy, which is (of course) the most effective maneuver for salvaging ischemic brain tissue that's not already infarcted.

Okay, so most of that just sped past me. What I did get, however, is a couple of really important things.

Firstly, medical devices are improving dramatically. Procedures we could only dream about yesterday are now possible - thanks to equipment. Good health outcomes still depend on medical teams, of course. The difference is that now, properly armed, they can achieve remarkable results. The problem is this all costs money. Production efficiencies have resulted in dramatic price freezes; unsurprisingly though, demand for the devices is rocketing.

Or should be.

The trouble is that whenever finance becomes an issue, optimal results get skewed. What happens to be the best for the patient might not (to take an example) necessarily produce the ideal outcome for a private health insurance provider. The trouble is that you don't get to choose where those health dollars flow. You'd hope it's being spent to make you better but, in the squabbling world of claims and counter-claim that determines how your health dollar gets spent, it pays to be alert. Everything is not as it seems.

As the price of insurance has risen over the past two years, more than 127,000 of the low-risk group aged 20 - 34 have abandoned their cover. This has led to claims of approaching armageddon from health funds, who've been sandwiched. Their profit margins are eroding faster than they can raise premiums so they're doing everything they can to repair their balance sheets. They've got a lot of money and a lot of political influence.

The government's particularly attuned to this noise and that's understandable when you realise 22 of the top 25 electorates where voters are taking out health insurance are Liberal held (Canberra, along with Perth and Fremantle, are the only Labor-held seats in that group). So, as the insurers have been squealing because of rising costs, everyone's been looking around to see if anyone's accidentally dropped some money on the floor or if there's some other way of cutting costs. And, because medical equipment is the new kid on the block, it looks like the easiest to fleece. After all, who will notice if things simply stay the same?

That's why we're in danger of becoming a third-world health system. Most medical equipment providers aren't based here and so devices come from overseas. It doesn't matter to them where these are sold. If we're not prepared to pay we will increasingly have a third-world health system, and this is where it gets really interesting.

Because of cost some private health insurers are unwilling to pay for these devices. They are, however, currently being used in public hospitals. This means patients might be better cared for in the public system, instead of using private cover. Once news of this gets around - and it will - the problem for health funds will rapidly cascade into crisis.

Good politics is, or should be, about balance. Reconcile competing forces, negotiate a deal and finally, after achieving the optimal solution (or something close to it) the good politician stands back and shares out the credit, exclaiming the words, "look, everyone's a winner!" As long as a good deal's been brokered there's always enough radiant light for everyone to bathe in the glow of success.

The threat to good governance comes when special interest groups push their own agenda and warping good policy. It tips the table so the ball keeps drifting towards one side. That's what's happening in health at the moment. Everyone's worried about the ball, the money, and trying to get more of it for themselves. The problem is so many interest groups are trying to tilt the so-called 'level playing field' that it's become unbalanced. Good policy is being sacrificed for ideology, as if this is somehow an unalloyed positive, intrinsically desirable for its own sake.

That's a danger signal because when politicians stop looking for the best solution, instead of pursuing your interests they've begun working for someone else.

It's impossible to over-egg the dramatic change that's been unleashed through these changes in medical technology - especially in the past couple of years. Procedures that formerly required long hospital stays (like the blood clot removal described at the top of this column) can now be completed much faster, more accurately, and with better patient outcomes than previously. The problem is that in order for this to happen, we need to spend more on obtaining the best equipment. Medical technology is offering radical new, and better ways of doing things than ever before. The critical thing is to ensure we have a system that will harness and pay for it.