Page 946 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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Mrs Carnell: Not force anyone. You are forcing them out of it.
MR BERRY: No, the private system cannot cut the mustard; that is why people will not cop it. They know that it is bad value because private hospital insurance is too high and private hospital costs are too high. If private hospitals want to bring their costs down to reasonable levels and if private health insurance wants to provide insurance at a market rate, people will take it out. The reason that people are not taking out - - -
Mr Cornwell: How come John James is extending the building?
MR BERRY: Insurance is falling off; it will be down to 30 per cent by the end of the year. It will continue to fall because people know that the Medicare system is good value, and private hospital care and private hospital insurance is not good value.
Mrs Carnell: Why do 600,000 pensioners have private health insurance?
MR BERRY: That is because people like you have frightened them about the public hospital system. Madam Speaker, we have in Australia a unique health system which will now be preserved, much to the aggravation of the Liberal Party. That is fair enough; they deserve to be aggravated because they tried to impose upon the people of Australia a system which would be to their detriment. In other words, people would be forced into private hospital insurance and be on the same waiting lists, if the Liberals had their way. They would be waiting for the same services that they are waiting for now. There would be no difference, except that they would pay more. They would pay the levy and pay private hospital insurance and still have to wait. There is nothing new in that, except that private health insurers would do better out of it. They are mates of the Liberal Party.
MBF ran a campaign which paralleled the campaign of the Liberal Party in relation to private hospital insurance - the massive scare campaign - and Labor presented it as it is. We saw the massive scare campaign run by the private hospital insurers, the private health care insurers, and we saw the AMA and Dr Bruce Shepherd out there campaigning for the Liberal Party. I have to say that that was a sign of victory. As soon as Dr Bruce Shepherd and the AMA were out there campaigning for the Liberals we knew that we were going to win. Everybody in Australia knew that Labor was on the right track. If Bruce Shepherd and the AMA were campaigning for the Liberals, we knew that we were on the right track.
Madam Speaker, this Medicare agreement for Australia was a landmark agreement because it was the signal to the people of Australia that there was a political party that had their well-being in mind.
Mr Cornwell: No, it was not a landmark; it was a landslide right over the people of Australia.
MR BERRY: It was a landslide because the people of Australia could see that they had a government which had social justice as the centrepoint of its policy-making procedure and a government which was concerned about delivery of health care to all of its people, not just the well-off. Madam Speaker, at the end of the day the proof of the pie is in the eating; Medicare is the great success story.
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