Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

Labor also will not be supporting the Greens amendments which would abolish the private health insurance rebate. We have been consistently of that view and have repeatedly voted the same way when the Greens have moved those amendments. You have to remember that Australia’s health system historically has been a mix of the public and private sectors. Basically, since our health system began, in whatever form that was, it has always been a mix of the public and private sectors.

There is a role for private health insurance, private hospitals and private practitioners, along with the very important role of the public system of delivery of health in Australia. Therefore, there are good policy reasons that we need to make sure that each of those important parts of our health system are maintained in a robust way.

I would like to refer Dr John Deeble’s comments when he talked about what he believed Medicare to be. He said:

I have always believed that Medicare is a national system of health care financing which includes the private sector and its insurers, not just a Commonwealth scheme of benefits for medical care and public hospital treatment. The two parts are complementary in ways which go beyond the market place, although there are vested interests with a reason to argue otherwise.

Dr Deeble was making a comment there about why you need to have public involvement in the private health insurance sector. I do not believe I am misquoting Dr Deeble on that point, but I think his explanation of Australia’s health system adds to our understanding of the mix of public and private interest in the way we deliver health in this country.