Since 1999, the private health insurance rebate has blighted health policy, funnelling tens of billions of dollars into the pockets of middle and higher-income earners and private health insurance companies with little or no efficiency or output benefits for our health system. As a health measure, it has been one of the most extraordinary wastes of taxpayer funding in modern Australian history; as middle class welfare, it has been a great success.
The rebate combined two of the enduring characteristics of the Howard government — its support for hybrid industry sectors composed of private companies that depended fundamentally on taxpayer largesse, and its obsession with vote-buying and handouts to the well-off. Instead of confining the incentive to those on low-incomes, the government has elected to taper off the rebate for higher incomes.
Nonetheless, the passage of a means test for the rebate through the House of Representatives this morning is a significant step forward in curbing middle class welfare, one that will have significant and growing benefits for future budgets.
That Tony Abbott, who already has enough problems with his fiscal policy, refused to commit to removing the means test by a specified date illustrates just how colossal an impost this policy is on taxpayers. The rebate in its current form should never have been introduced, and it should never return.
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And do you think Gillard and team will get much recognition from MSM for this achievement? The Age’s main political commentator thought it more useful to write an article on how the 4 Corners program, although it only provided scant new information, “titbits”, it was “dynamite”.
And Bolt was even better listing 7, count them, 7 lies that Julia was guilty of. Now several of them weren’t actually lies and at least a couple were so far back in time that it is getting a bit of a stretch, but that didn’t stop him shouting “liar, liar” from the tree tops.
Even this article, although it seems to think this is genuinely a good step forward manages to skip any recognition of the Government’s continuing successful track record of reform.
Who is responsible for this pro-government masthead comment masquerading as an editorial? Is nobody on the crikey team prepared to put their name to this one-sided diatribe?
Whilst I can accept an argument for a tapering means test on health insurance rebates, surely we can do so without the pro-government propaganda.
As someone who is involved in the healthcare industry, and in private
i declare my biasis before saying that the statement regarding the lack
of outcomes measured by having the rebate is clearly untrue. If you
had taken out private health insurance and an operation was done
within weeks not years (or never) in the public sector you might have
realised this. All available evidence suggests for discrete elective
procedures the efficiency of private hospitals is much higher, they
have much to lose i.e. profit if the dont. Perhaps asking health care
workers who work in both public and private institutions about
efficiency might be useful.
Saying that, as someone who received the rebate, i dont need it and
i wont drop out and I agree that i didnt ever need it. But people need
to aware that no country even the US can afford modern med care
without contributions from the users.
Whistleblower – this isn’t pro-govt propaganda – this is discussing the policy and why it was a dud to start with. Good riddance to it.
Daman – re “lack of outcomes” the article isn’t referring to individual patients – it’s the outcomes for the health system as a whole. You don’t count the cases (legion at least here in Canberra) of people with private insurance even being advised *by doctors* (!) not to tell the hospital they had said insurance so they’d be taken as public patients. A couple of years ago when the question came up before an ACT government minister claimed that the introduction of the levy had zero effect on loads on the public hospital system, probably this being a major factor. Methinks a lot of people only take up private insurance to avoid the medicare levy.
BTW, in the late ’90s (during the IT boom) my partner and I were making good money (into the zone where today we’d be affected by the tapering off of the rebate) we deliberately didn’t take out private health insurance. At that stage there was still a gap payment on private procedures which could be thousands, there were repeated reports of rorting by overservicing, I’d given up dental insurance because of increased premiums and reduced payments, frankly we’d rather pay the medicare levy and support the universal system rather than a (IMHO) parasitic private insurance industry and if you’re REALLY sick, you’ll get in just as quickly in the public system.
Private insurance only helps with quicker access to elective surgery. Of course you can also (as I do with dental) self-insure, so it’s not even vital for that.
Wot MalSt said – the vast majority of procedures undertaken by private hospitals are elective and often cosmetic. For something life threatening or traumatic (eg motor accident) the public system is best, instant and experienced.
For those who want private treatment let them pay whatever the gouging industry demands but, as with private education, that’s your choice and you are still obliged, as a citizen of this commonwealth, to pay into the common pool, ie taxes as decided by parliament.
That Tony Abbott… refused to commit to removing the means test… illustrates just how colossal an impost this policy is.
As an example of how even the best, most fair & egalitarian policy can be traduced and spun by the shoutjocks & Mudorc, it is beyond comprehension that people can be taken in by the lies they trundle out. won’t someone think of the families with children? Those on >$250K pa? Ummm, i think there are others more deserving, who depend upon the public system, as in schools, roads, water, sewage, power, you know, what was once known as ”civis, an interdependent polity where none were excluded from the common weal.