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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 130 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

I now turn to the obvious solution to this public health crisis: get rid of the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate. The reasons for this are many and varied, but mainly the rebate should go because it is bad policy. It has not achieved its aims, is now nothing more than a subsidy to inefficient firms and provides no incentive to improve efficiency in the private health insurance industry.

The federal government is shovelling-and I mean "shovelling"-an obscene amount of money into these private health funds for no apparent gain. Premiums continue to rise, and customer satisfaction levels continue to drop. The only reason we have seen any increase in numbers enrolled in private health insurance is the introduction of lifetime community rating.

People have not signed up because the product is suddenly value for money. They have signed up because the government has pulled out the big stick. The lifetime community rating is a big stick. In spite of all the government subsidies and handouts, the private health insurance industry continues to put its hand out.

Premiums continue to rise, and each premium rise is an extra impost on all taxpayers for the benefit of the private health insurance industry. The annual cost of the rebate is $2.3 billion, and this will grow with each premium increase. In fiscal terms, it is a bottomless pit, a treasurer's nightmare. How it ever got past Peter Costello I have not got the faintest idea.

Mr Speaker, 55 per cent of Australians do not have private health insurance. They rely on public assistance. The federal government should stop spending their taxes on supporting private health insurance, which these Australians cannot access, and start spending it on the public system, which everyone uses-a system that provides a safety net for all Australians.

In the end you have to ask: what have we really gained from this rebate policy? All that has happened is that $2 billion in private money has been pulled out and replaced by $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies. The $2.3 billion spent on the rebate could have been better used to improve GP services, including higher Medicare payments and more practice support for GPs.

It has been estimated that the public hospital system could treat 60 per cent of all the patients now treated in the private system with that money. Wouldn't that be a better use of taxpayer dollars?

Over the last 12 months or so, the lack of a general practice service for the Lanyon Valley has been raised time and time again. The department, to its credit, has fought long and hard with the Commonwealth, trying to get some solution to this lack of a medical service for the Lanyon Valley, including the attempt to get nurse practitioner services down there, to at least alleviate part of it. There are nearly 15,000 people down there, and there is one full practice that cannot take anybody any more. That is 15,000 people who have to get in a car or a bus and go into Calwell, the nearest practice that bulk-bills.

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