February 13, 2012
This legislation represents almost $2.8 billion being ripped out of the pockets of Australians who hold private health insurance.
When Labor were last in power the level of people covered by private health insurance plummeted from 50 per cent of the population to a low of 30 per cent in the mid-1990s. We also saw premiums rise by almost 40 per cent.
Independant modelling has predicted that up to 1.6 million Australians will drop their cover over the next five years and up to 4.3 million Australians will downgrade their cover,
resulting in an increase to premiums 10 per cent above what they otherwise would have.
We will see an extra 845,000 Australians admitted to public hospitals and an extra $3.8 billion in additional recurrent costs for the public hospital system.
There are 96,728 people in Boothby who are covered by private health insurance—72.3 per cent of voters on the roll have private health insurance, 63.3 per cent of voters hold hospital treatment insurance and 71.5 per cent hold general insurance for extras. Both Flinders Private Hospital and Griffith private hospital will also be affected.
Over 2,000 Boothby residents have signed a petition opposing this measure, this bill has already been rejected by the Senate on two separate occasions and I will be opposing this legislation in Parliament. ...
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