Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on an issue which is a very real concern to the people of the electorate of Hindmarsh. Once again, private health insurance has gone up. Once again, the Minister for Health and Ageing has rubber-stamped the health insurance industry’s suggested increase—for the fifth time in a row. It is the fifth consecutive premium increase for private health funds. While not quite as bad as last year’s eight per cent, this year’s 5.7 per cent adds not just to last year’s massive rise but to the 7.5 per cent in 2004 and the 7.3 per cent in 2003.

Time and again the increase is well above the CPI. This year’s increase means that the price of private health insurance has increased by 39 per cent since 2001. This is in the context of a promise by the federal government to keep private health insurance affordable and put downward pressure on premiums. At 39 per cent more expensive than it was five years ago, I wonder who it is affordable for, because the people who are contacting me are not telling me that they can afford it. It is increasingly getting out of reach for average people. For younger Australians, who are rarely ill, it is a cost that does not add up. Younger people are dropping out of private health insurance or are failing to take it up in the first place, making the private health insurance system unsustainable. Older people are more likely to keep their insurance because they know they are more likely to need it. Younger people cannot afford to prop up the system, so the costs increase for the insurance companies who, in turn, pass on the costs to their customers.

Blind Freddy can see the problem, but the health minister is content to sit by and allow private health insurance premiums to continue to spiral out of control and just rubber-stamp the industry’s call for increases when it wants one. Because of this government’s attitude towards Medicare—it has reigned over a dramatic fall in bulk-billing rates—and its failure to adequately respond to the growing needs of the public health system, most people feel that private health insurance is a necessity. In fact, there are people who have told me that it really has become a matter of having to choose between cutting back on their food bill and paying for their health insurance.

As I have said in this place before, private insurance price hikes are putting Australia on a path towards an Americanised health system in which only the rich can afford to be healthy. Such a system is entirely un-Australian. Yet this government continues to treat our public health system with disinterest instead of fighting to keep health insurance premiums down and making sure there is a robust public health care system which can respond to the needs of all Australians.