Ann Corcoran (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to start my comments this afternoon with a letter to the editor which was published in the Age on 5 September this year. It is signed by Robert Corcoran, who is not only a constituent but also my dad. He wrote:

Although they do not physically provide any medical treatment or hospital accommodation, the various health funds do the real work of collecting insurance money and returning much of it to help pay medical costs. Leaving aside the more fundamental subject of the fairness or otherwise of the present piebald system, the topical question is whether this financial service could be provided more effectively by selling Medibank Private.

Shareholders in a sold Medibank Private would certainly expect a return on their investment better than bank interest—and, based on its estimated price of $1.5 billion ... this would require an annual payment of much more than $100 million a year to the new shareholders. What effect would this have on already steadily increasing premium rates?

Perhaps we would all be better off if the Government turned its attention to restoring and improving the effectiveness of the universal system of Medicare, especially by reducing waiting times. Then we could all be assured of appropriate treatment, whether able to afford expensive private health insurance or not.

The purpose of the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006 is to amend the National Health Act to allow the government to sell Medibank Private. The government has said that it will not sell Medibank immediately, but it wants this legislation in place so it can sell it in 2008. Since 1976, Medibank Private has been controlled by the Commonwealth government. The fund is a not-for-profit. It has about three million members and about 28 per cent of the private health insurance market across Australia. It has about a third of the market in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania and 44 per cent of the market in the Northern Territory. It is the only fund which operates in every state and territory in this country. There are over 40 health funds in Australia, five of which are for-profit. These funds cover about 31 per cent of the market.

See this speech in context