Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

The Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 is a distinct change from recent legislation brought before this House by the Minister for Health and Ageing. Several measures brought before this House in recent weeks will have the effect of driving people out of private health insurance in this country. Measures such as the Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives Bill 2009 will be a detriment to private health insurance and will cause further harm to the already stressed public health system in our country. They were desperately created by this government to pay for its reckless cash splashes and the mountain of debt that it is now saddling the nation with for many years to come. On the other hand, this legislation actually seeks to encourage people to take out and keep private health insurance with all the attendant benefits that it brings to the nation’s health system.

The bill will add a new category to the insured groups to which private health insurance can offer insurance policies. Currently the Private Health Insurance Act requires that insurers only be allowed to offer policies to particular insured groups, namely singles, couples and families with dependent children. Since late 2007 the rules have been changed to include another extended family category, ‘dependent children non-student’. At this point I would like to take this opportunity to recognise the work of former Health Minister Tony Abbott and the way in which he was able to work with the private health insurers and also recognise the private health insurers for their efforts in maintaining a situation where more people could potentially come into the privately insured pool in this country. This category allowed family policies to cover people between the ages of 18 and 24 who were single and not in full-time education. The category was developed by health insurers to encourage young adults to maintain health insurance cover into adulthood. The arrangements, however, have been temporary. This bill proposes amendments to insert the category ‘dependent child non-student’ in the Private Health Insurance Act and will enable insurers to offer policies to this group on a permanent basis. Health insurers will be able to charge a higher premium for these extended family policies than for others. But that premium is expected to be less than that charged to a young single individual.

With the percentage of people in the 20- to 24-year age group covered by private health insurance in decline, down to 3.9 per cent in 2008, this measure will hopefully make insurance under a family policy umbrella more attractive and see younger people remain covered by insurance. We will have to wait and see though because the government’s other actions will make the price of insurance that much more expensive for many Australians. Insurance premiums will rise for 2.3 million people by between 14.3 per cent and a staggering 66.7 per cent as a direct result of the Rudd government’s decision to make changes to the health insurance rebates put in place by the coalition to actually boost private health membership. I remind the House that the government promised over and over again it would not make those changes—just one of the many broken promises as to health. I think that shows that this government does not have a proper direction as to the way in which it is taking health in this country. Pressure for premiums to rise even further will flow from the rebate changes which the government now admits could see 40,000 people drop out of insurance altogether. That is the Treasury’s conservative estimate, I might add. Others, including the respected firm Access Economics, estimate the rebate changes could force 100,000 people out of private health insurance. That is on top of the 492,000 that the government still expects to quit insurance over last year’s decision to change the Medicare levy surcharge thresholds.

So we have a series of measures that are sure to have substantial negative impacts on private health insurance. Those impacts will flow on to all Australians including those who rely on the public hospital system. Fewer people with insurance means more people waiting for treatment in hospitals, longer queues and, under the Rudd government, longer waiting times. That from a government that promised to fix those very same hospitals by the end of this month! That is only a matter of days away. Clearly, the Rudd government cannot claim that it has fixed Australia’s 750 public hospitals. No doubt the Prime Minister and the minister for health are already drawing up their spin to tell Australians they have fixed Australia’s public hospitals when every piece of evidence is to the contrary—and every Australian knows that. The coalition in government worked hard to reverse declines in health insurance membership. Under the Keating Labor government insurance membership had plunged to just 30 per cent of the population. Through the rebates and other measures it took, the Howard government reversed that trend and more than 44 per cent of Australians are covered. But now we have another Labor government and the message is clear: private health insurance is under attack once again. We will hold this government to account for its claim that it will fix public hospitals by the middle of this year. Its blatant attack on private health insurance over the last 18 months has been quite remarkable, almost without precedent. You would have to look back to the Hawke-Keating years to recognise a similar attack on people with private health insurance.

We should be holding up people in this country who have private health insurance as heroes of our nation who share some of the burden of the health system. People who insure for themselves—who have a capacity to do so—relieve some of the pressure on the public hospitals in the services that they, quite rightly, provide to people who are more needy and do not have the capacity to provide support or insurance for themselves. This country should always maintain a health system that protects those who are most vulnerable, but we should also put in place incentives—a system that provides benefits to those who are able to self-insure and defray some of the costs that otherwise would have to be met by the Australian taxpayer. We should recognise and start a debate in this country to recognise that these people should be embraced and should not be excluded from holding private health insurance, because, ultimately, under a Labor government or a Liberal government, regardless of what colour of government you have in this country, there will always be a system that provides for those Australians who cannot provide for themselves; there will always be universality, and that should always be the case.

But if you have a case, such as we have with this government at the moment, where they seem completely determined to drive private health insurance into the ground yet again, then the pressures on the public system will again become unbearable. I know that the member for Herbert, who is in the chamber today, has been a great champion for health services in Townsville and the surrounding region in his electorate and he would be horrified to hear a suggestion by the Rudd government that they had fixed public hospitals, not just in Queensland but around the country. It is a remarkable claim that they have made and of course they have said nothing about it in the intervening period. We are approaching the 30 June deadline for the Rudd government to meet their obligation—their election commitment to fix public hospitals—and yet they still have not detailed one criterion or suggested one benchmark that will be the benchmark against which they are determining whether or not they have fixed public hospitals. It is a remarkable situation and all Australians would know that Mr Rudd cannot claim that he has fixed public hospitals. He cannot suggest that there is no more work to be done. He made a commitment: he said to people that he would fix public hospitals, he would end the blame game and he would somehow—somehow!—fix public hospitals by 30 June. He has only a week to go and there is nothing on the table from this government that would suggest that they are even serious about meeting this obligation. With their claims that they have fixed public hospitals, Australians must really wonder, in the face of all of the evidence, what is going on with this government, particularly in the area of health policy.

We hope that measures in this bill will make it somewhat easier for families with young adults to keep the young adults covered by private insurance. That is why when we were in government we put in place this framework—we allowed this framework to take place—to work with the private health insurers to encourage young people to take up private health insurance and to stay on their parents’ cover as an incentive for them to remain in private health insurance when they go onto their own policy and relieve some of the pressure, and this is incredibly important, particularly when you look at waiting lists around the country. People in this country would be amazed to hear that if they lived in Townsville, as the member for Herbert does, there is now in Townsville Hospital a waiting list to get on a waiting list; it is quite amazing—

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