A former health minister has been giving an insight into the difficulties faced by senior staff and politicians at the DHSS.

A day after the health department launched a major consultation on how healthcare should be funded in the future, Speaker of the House of Keys Steve Rodan says delivering a quality health service will naturally cost money, with demand outstripping budgets.

He believes it's important to gauge public expectation and have honest dialogue to reach a consensus.

On Mandate this morning he outlined some of the challenges involved in running a health service:

"There's the short term problem for the department of balancing its budget allocation, and that was certainly, during my two years as minister, a constant headache.

"The need to bring in waiting list initiatives, to ensure the public did not suffer, and the longer term issue of managing into the future and, of course, that requires planning for the future.

"It is quite right that this consultation is now going on because to plan your priorities we should really be looking at a true National Health Service and not the 'national sickness service' that we currently have."