But navigating it can be complicated and scary. The system is plagued by long waits and high out-of-pocket costs that leave many people feeling frustrated and disappointed. Ageing infrastructure, complex bureaucracy and funding split between the state and federal levels don't help, either.

After 16 years in opposition, NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner came in with plenty of work to do. She immediately began a program of infrastructure, as well as devolving control of hospitals down to local health districts, allowing local administrators and doctors more say in running the health system in the way that suits them.

"I think the devolution has had a profound impact on health, that is the establishment of the districts and boards, and that's partly because it has sent a message to the people working in the hospitals - the doctors and nurses and others - that their ideas actually matter," Mrs Skinner said in a pre-election interview with Fairfax Media. "Morale has never been better."

But the plan does carry its risks, particularly that local health districts already instructed to find millions in savings from their own budgets and under intense pressure to cut surgery and emergency funding will find "savings" in other, less scrutinised areas, such as mental health services.

Mrs Skinner has set "integrated care", as her next priority.

"I want people to experience better health by having a seamless pathway through providers," she said. "This begins with getting help to stay well - preventive health measures such as better diet and exercise - but it also involves better screening by GPs and community-based health professionals, who can link with hospitals as needed, and hospitals that can easily link back to primary care".

Mrs Skinner said she had got waiting lists under control at the same time as rolling out an ambitious infrastructure plan, and people were more concerned about the lack of (federally controlled) GPs than state-based issues.

Yet, the system can still be opaque. Last month, Fairfax Media was contacted by a patient who had to wait five months after receiving a GP referral to get an appointment with a surgeon at Royal North Shore Hospital - a delay common for many of the busy major hospitals. It is only at that appointment that a patient will be placed on a waiting list.

And the median wait time for "non-urgent" elective surgery has increased over the past four years, to 214 days, with NSW now having some of the longest waits in Australia. However, Mrs Skinner argues that is well within the clinically recommended limit of one year, and this week she also announced the government would fund an extra 13,500 extra surgeries, along with hiring thousands of nurses and doctors to help ensure hospitals have capacity to treat people on time.

Labor is using its campaign to highlight the further uncertainty and out-of-pocket costs that will be created by the federal government's attempts at health reform, as well as making funding announcements for big increases to paramedic numbers, dedicated nurse-to-patient ratios, free chemotherapy drugs in hospitals and several infrastructure projects, including a $100 million paediatric surgical centre for Campbelltown Hospital.

Labor health spokesman Walt Secord is also concerned that the government's plans to outsource public care to the private sector.

"Liberals and Nationals at the state and federal level are the same: they want to cut and privatise," he said.

As well as focusing on projects and plans it hopes will improve access to health care, such as funding pregnant women to get the whooping cough vaccine, Labor has also focused on more fundamental, big-picture arguments about the values underpinning public healthcare. It says federal cuts to health funding will combine with "efficiency savings" and cuts imposed by NSW, and an agenda of privatisation to increase costs and further fracture healthcare.

"We believe there are certain things the government sector just has to do," Mr Secord said. "Co-locations [with the private sector] and things like that in certain circumstances are fine. But … for example infection control is not something you can put out to the private sector."

What the experts say

Jeffrey Braithwaite, professor and director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation and director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science at Macquarie University:

The way the debate about health goes, you would think there was nothing to it but hospital beds and waiting lists. Jeffrey Braithwaite says politicians need to get over these obsessions if they are going to make real improvements to the system.

"The core matters for the NSW population are public health issues: healthier diets, exercise, and preventive measures, to reduce over time levels of obesity, cancer, injury, and diabetes," he said.

The obsession with waiting lists also distorted the system by directing funding away from areas that needed it more, he said, as did the ongoing cost shifting between the federal government and the states.

He said Mrs Skinner's very long apprenticeship as opposition health spokeswoman had produced "a good government so far as health is concerned". He also said a key area for reform was further integrating care across the many silos of the health system, and building better ways of sharing information about everyday practice that was working well (not just bad events or breakthroughs).

Saxon Smith, Australian Medical Association NSW president:

Dctors on the frontlines of our health system wondered how they would ever make it work, Dr Smith said. Our growing population and increasing rates of chronic health problems had left hospitals and GPs struggling to keep up with demand, he said.

All in all, Mrs Skinner is respected by the doctors' association, which is pleased by many of the developments over the past four years.

And it attributes many of our current problems directly to the federal government, which cut huge amounts of funding from the states' health budgets at the last election and left hospital planners with little about what their funding will be in two years.

However, doctors say the state government must increase funding, and stop expecting local health districts to source an increasing proportion of their budgets from other sources, if hospitals are going to cope over the next four years.

"Patients aren't just increasing in number, they're presenting at hospital in worse shape than ever," Dr Smith said. "[But] there are not enough beds to admit them to".

The AMA has released an extensive list of election priorities, including improving access to healthcare in rural and regional communities, involving doctors more closely in the running of local health districts, funding for GP roles to be integrated into hospitals, and improved palliative care.

Anthony Brown, Health Consumers NSW executive director:

The experience of people thrust into the health system was often disjointed, confusing and marked by a sense of powerlessness, Anthony Brown said. Although both sides of politics had made the right noises about including health consumers in decisions about their care, more could be done.

"What we're seeing at the moment is a big increase in people with chronic disease, we're seeing people with more complex health problems and we need those systems that are managing the person with all their multitudinous health problems ... to be talking to each other," Mr Brown said.

"It's making sure that the person's needs are the factor that organises their care and not just being really good at treating one particular condition."

Mrs Skinner's plans for integrated care needed to be extended into aged care, which should be seen as a part of the health system rather than separate from it, he said.

Mrs Skinner had overseen the introduction of consumer advocates on local health boards and hospitals had improved their feedback mechanisms through surveys and focus groups, which was commendable and needed to be continued, he said.

Using the system

Melanie Cage has seen the best of the health system - but it hasn't all been easy.

A policewoman with two daughters, aged two and four, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in a month that she learnt her dog was dying, sold one house and was knocked back for finance on another, and had university assignments due.

"I can't tell you how stressed we were," Mrs Cage, 37, said.

"It was a crazy, crazy time."

But while everything else swung wildly, the health system was solid.

The moment her doctor assessed a suspicious lump in her right breast, she was sent for tests, with bad news to follow.

"The doctor rang me and said, 'You need to come in'," Mrs Cage said.

"I said, 'I'm already coming in tomorrow,' and she said, 'No, I need you sooner than that'."

The tests had detected a stage-two to -three aggressive cancer in her breast, and the doctors recommended immediate surgery.

But the thick period of public holidays in April 2014 meant it was four weeks before that surgery took place, by which time a second more aggressive cancer was apparent. Chemotherapy and radiation followed.

"I wonder if the second lump appeared in that time, because it was never seen on the mammogram or the ultrasound," Mrs Cage said.

"He got it early enough and it hadn't moved into my lymph nodes, but because it was aggressive and I was young, and because of the type of cancer, I will have to be monitored for life."

Mrs Cage had private insurance but it did not cover cancer treatment, so she went through the public system and still found herself about $1000 out of pocket in consultants' fees, medication and tests that were not fully covered by Medicare.

"You've still got to pay for anaesthetists and all that. It costs a fortune.

"But I've been fairly lucky. I know a woman who has to pay $5000 for each chemotherapy session, because it's not covered by the PBS. There are treatments out there that are not covered."

Mrs Cage could not fault the nursing staff and the care she received at the Nepean Cancer Centre, which she said made her experience less traumatic than it might have been.

She now wants to get her left breast removed, but because the surgery is not urgent, it will be three months before it can be done. The scheduled operation was recently pushed back four weeks.

She is also disillusioned about the value of her private health insurance.

"It's a total waste of money and I'm furious that they're putting it up again," she said.

2015 NSW election: Policy reckoner

<a href="http://smh.com.au/interactive/2015/nsw-election/policy-reckoner/app.html" _rte_href="http://smh.com.au/interactive/2015/nsw-election/policy-reckoner/app.html">2015 NSW state elections - policy reckoner</a>