Page 942 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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Madam Speaker, I think Mr Berry's approach is socially unjust. He expects people on very low incomes to pick up the tab for those on high incomes who do not take out private health insurance, like the Prime Minister. It is for this reason that the Liberal States and Keith Wilson of Western Australia - - -
Mr Connolly: This is great. They have not learned a thing from 13 March. Keep going with this strategy and you will be on that side of every chamber in Australia.
Mr Berry: I thought it was going to be hard to make you carry this baggage forever, but there is no difficulty at all.
Mr Cornwell: I take a point of order. Could we have some silence, please, from the so-called Government, Madam Speaker?
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Cornwell, you took the words right out of my mouth. Please proceed, Mrs Carnell.
MRS CARNELL: It is for this reason that the Liberal States and Keith Wilson from Western Australia pushed so hard to make the Commonwealth recognise the importance of private health insurance in the new Medicare agreement. Our Health Minister, unfortunately, has a blind spot when it comes to privately insured patients. The impression that Mr Berry gives is that he regards these people with private insurance as a scourge on our public health system. The Minister fails to accept the fact that privately insured patients actually contribute to the public health system for the services that they receive, thus reducing the pressure on the public purse. However, in Mr Berry's explanation of his tangled financial predictions during the last sitting he admitted that in-patient receipts were already dramatically below budget this financial year. In simple terms this means that ACT Health will have less money to spend on our public hospital system.
Nationally, private health fund contributions to the health system have also dropped dramatically. In 1980 the private contributions amounted to 29 per cent of total public hospital funding. Today that has dropped to under 21 per cent - almost a 10 per cent fall. This means that there is considerably less money to spend on public hospital funding. In Canberra the fall in the number of privately insured patients cost ACT Health $4.6m last year alone. Does Mr Berry realise or care that, for every one per cent drop in privately insured patients using ACT public hospitals, the system loses at least $1m per year? That figure will escalate with time. There will be less money for public hospitals and, more importantly, more people relying on them. If nothing else, I wish that the Minister would take a realistic view of the positive aspects of private insurance, because it really does help the public health system meet the bills and address the ever lengthening waiting lists. Madam Speaker, the Liberals see a need to recognise the importance of the private sector, and this recognition does not come at the expense of the public health system; it enhances it.
We are also concerned about this Government's approach to a number of issues relating to the recently signed Medicare agreement. In his statement the Minister, Mr Berry, mentioned payments from New South Wales for cross-border patient treatment. What he did not tell us is how much the ACT will actually be paid to treat New South Wales patients, and whether the ACT is to receive payment based on the ACT cost per bed day, the New South Wales cost per bed day or the
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