A plan to force more than 3 million Australians aged over 65 to pay hundreds of dollars more for their private health insurance has been slammed by the opposition as a \u201csneaky tax\u201d on seniors.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Mark Butler announced changes for those over 65s before the budget confirming older Australians will have to pay the same amount for health insurance as people in their 50s. <\/p>\n
The removal of higher private health insurance rebates for those aged 65 is expected to increase private health insurance costs by up to $250 a year and cause around 44,000 to abandon their cover according to some calculations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At the time, Mr Butler said the current policy was \u201cnot fair between generations\u201d but pledged the $3 billion saved over four years, would be spent on aged care.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Channel 7\u2019s Sunrise, the Health Minister accused the Health Insurance industry of peddling \u201cself-serving modelling\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re confident that this is the right decision, and it\u2019s important to remember while we\u2019re doing this, we have to find more money for aged care services,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, every dollar we save through this measure will be invested in more aged care beds, better care, more aged care, home care packages, because we know every single budget we\u2019re having to find more money to care for people who need that care and deserve that care.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankly, and there\u2019s no lazy free money lying around. We have to take sometimes quite hard decisions in a budget, and this is a hard decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunrise host Nat Barr put to him a hypothetical of an older Australian with a roughly on a $6,000 premium.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re over 65, you\u2019ll lose about $250 a year. If you\u2019re over 70, you might lose about $500 a year. They\u2019re sort of rough numbers,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you take that rebate off those people, how do you know that only 40,000 will go off the private health system. What if your Treasury modelling figures are wrong? What if tens of thousands just say, \u2018You know what? I am sick of this. I\u2019m getting out of private health\u2019, and then more people go into public hospitals?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we\u2019ve been modelling these things for quite a while,\u2019\u2019 Mr Butler replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019ve been a range of changes over the years made, and increases happen to private health insurance membership, of course. Sorry, fees every single year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we have some experience in understanding the behavioural pact of these things. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut remember, what this will mean now is two households next to each other, for example, on $50,000, one of them over 65, the other household in their 40s or in their 50s with kids, they\u2019ll now both receive the same subsidy from government or from taxpayers to pay for their private health insurance.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo about a quarter of their private health bill will be paid for by taxpayers, and I think that\u2019s a pretty equitable place to be. Two households next to each other give the same subsidy based on their income.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s multigenerational equity? For people over 70 who have some of this taken off them?,\u2019\u2019 Nat Barr asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we\u2019ve had to find more money to fund aged care services,\u2019\u2019 Mr Butler replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve put an eye-watering amount of extra money into aged care over the last two years to get it out of the position that the Royal Commission described it as neglect, and to fund the extra demand that\u2019s coming from the ageing of the baby boomer generation, and that sometimes involves difficult decisions in a budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like this has been a difficult decision. Of course, I\u2019d prefer not to make it, but I think it takes us back to the old position where people received health insurance subsidies based on their income rather than their age.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator Hume slammed the move as another broken promise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a tricky and sneaky, and dare I say, mean-spirited $11 billion tax on older Australians,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMark, you didn\u2019t announce this before the election, and I think it would have made a serious impact on the way people thought about the Labor Party if you had have done that.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s face it, a lot of these older Australians are on fixed incomes, and they simply can\u2019t absorb the changes, the new imposts that you\u2019ve made on their private health insurance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve done the right thing for years. They\u2019ve alleviated the pressure on the public system, and now you\u2019re going to tax them more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat seems profoundly unfair when you\u2019ve got your own Labor health ministers from other states telling you that this is going to affect the public health system. Well, that should be a warning bell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator Hume said her office had been inundated with \u201cemails and letters from older Australians that are telling me that they\u2019re either going to go have to go back to work or they\u2019re going to have to give up on their private health insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what that means for younger Australians, if they don\u2019t have private health insurance, if they have an accident or they get sick and they turn up to an emergency ward, well, they\u2019re going to have to take a queue and stand in a queue behind older Australians that have given up on their private health insurance,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to be on waiting lists for critical care behind older Australians that would have otherwise been in the private system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a false economy, but moreover, it\u2019s another sneaky Labor tax on older Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about pensioners, Mr Butler said they would still get a rebate, but a lower one.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, you get a rebate. You just get the same rebate, the same rebate that the household next door in their 50s with kids will be getting for their private health insurance,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if you\u2019re a pensioner, taxpayers will still pay about a quarter of your private health insurance. There was a premium that older Australians would get. They\u2019d get a better payment than the household next door to them that happen to be in their 40s and 50s.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re going back to the position. We\u2019re going back to the position where people get that subsidy based on their income, and every dollar we save here is going into the critical aged care services that we need to continue to build for older Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plan to force more than 3 million Australians aged over 65 to pay hundreds of dollars 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