When direct subsidies and indirect costs are taken into account, private health insurance rebates cost the taxpayer more than $12 billion a year, yet there is little evidence to prove they achieve their primary goal of taking pressure off the public health system.
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Australia’s usual model of general practice relies heavily on private businesses earning revenue for each service they provide. That can work reasonably well where there are lots of patients and doctors (i.e. cities). It works less reliably in a town of a few thousand people, where maintaining a viable practice can depend on rents, accommodation, hospital arrangements and whether somebody can cobble together funding from three levels of government.
Two million Australians are delaying or skipping an appointment each year, with around half doing so because of the rising cost of seeing a specialist.
Australia has created a strange market for specialist care. Medicare helps pay for it. Governments subsidise it. Patients often need it. But, for much private specialist care, the final price is largely left to the provider – and patients are increasingly being priced out.
For the first time in 20 years, doctors at some of the Victoria’s biggest and busiest public hospitals walked off the job, as a leading Australian economist warns the state risks losing its best doctors if the dispute over pay and conditions isn’t resolved soon.
One Nation’s suggestion to cut the excise by 75% is utterly ludicrous. It would take the excise back to where it was in 2013, and in real terms back to where it was in 2001. That isn’t a policy to reduce illegal smoking; it’s a policy to increase all smoking.
Online gambling companies are hitting the jackpot in Australia, with research showing five of the biggest operators raked in $5.4 billion in a single year while paying just $107 million in company income tax.
