Since becoming health minister, Sussan Ley has spent most of her time cleaning up the mess she inherited from her predecessor, Peter Dutton, who was unable to sell the GP co-payment to voters and who alienated the medical profession with his inability to meaningfully engage on issues of substance.
The review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule will now be her test. Already it has soured relations between the Australian Medical Association and the minister. But a root-and-branch review of the MBS is well overdue. As Four Corners showed last night, we have a system in which over-diagnosis and pointless testing are rife. Any government program, especially one as longstanding as the MBS, should be the subject of regular review to ensure taxpayers are getting the most value for money and recipients are getting the best possible services. Appropriately, the review is being led by clinicians, not bureaucrats, with a focus on patient welfare.
There is one critical area, however, that the government is not reviewing but should be. The private health insurance rebate — which, despite being significantly curbed by the previous government, will still cost taxpayers over $6 billion this year — is the single greatest area of waste in the Commonwealth health system. That funding would be far more effectively directed into health services rather than the pockets of people with private health insurance.
It’s time for an independent review of this subsidy for an industry that has done extraordinarily well out of the taxpayer, for unclear health outcomes.
This is simply another area, like the super tax rebate, where lefties treat foregone tax revenue as an expense when no one in Treasury will put their hand on their heart and say that the government would actually collect extra tax if they got rid of it.
In fact, the financial incentives for high income earners to have private health cover is the winning of this rebate. Therefore if the rebate is abolished, tens of thousands of people would abandon their private health cover. There is certainly room for a discussion regarding what value private health actually delivers for their money but you can be confidant that a significant amount of work done by private hospitals, obstetrics being an obvious one, would go straight into the public hospital system, increasing the cost of the health budget.
The real story here is that the removal of this rebate is, in the minds of the socialists, a tax increase on high income earners, plain and simple. The real discussion therefore, is whether or not the economy would benefit from increasing taxes on the wealth generating sector of society.
Few economists favour that.
“Appropriately, the review is being led by clinicians, not bureaucrats, with a focus on patient welfare.”
I think clients also need a voice here too. I hope organisations like the Consumer Health Forum would be consulted too.
I doubt, OneHand, that the cost of extra use of the public system would be within cooee of $6B.
Most people who opt for private cover do so in the (often erroneous) belief that they’ll get better care, their choice of doctors, Champagne, fresh flowers & choccies.
No-one goes to private hospitals for crisis care, that is when the non profit (aka common weal) is always going to be the fall back safeguard.
As with most of the lies of RWNJs, the so oft proclaimed Stand of Yer Own Three Feet (when really it is the Fingers of the Poor) credo goes silent when real medicine is needed rather than cosmetic tweaking.
Not that I would trust a tory government to put the savings into the public system – jes’ sayin…
Bad example, David Hand. Rates of Caeserean births are much higher in private hospitals – unnecessary and expensive for all.
AR,
I know we will never agree on this but I just point out that the rebate is a tax rebate. That means it is available to people who actually pay tax, particularly those who are on or near the top marginal tax rate.
Taxpayers are not standing on the fingers of the poor. They are funding the poor through their taxes.
What you are arguing is that taxpayers should pay more tax to support the poor more. As I said in my original post, that is what this story is really about.
Just another tax slug on the wealth creating section of our community.