The Labor Party this week reintroduced legislation to parliament to withdraw support for private health insurance, despite widespread assurances prior to the last election that the private health insurance rebate would be retained.
Broken promises are increasingly the norm for the Rudd Labor Government. Kevin Rudd committed to fixing the public hospital system by the 30th June, 2009 yet waitlists remain and patients still languish in hallways.
Given the Rudd Government’s failure to improve public hospitals, the proposed legislation will prove to be counter-intuitive, placing significant additional pressure on an already strained public hospital system.
“In my own electorate of Boothby, more than 90,000 residents have private health cover. The private health rebate gave many people a real choice to take up health insurance, and the increased take up over the last 12 years proves how highly many Australians value this”, Andrew Southcott said.
The Government’s own figures show that at least 40,000 Australians are expected to drop their private health cover as a result of these changes. Access Economics report that the figure could well be in excess of 4 times this number.
All Australians will be forced to pay more for their health care as a result of Labor’s crusade against private health insurance.