Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You do not believe it will have an impact? Well, there is the admission from the government: they do not believe that this measure will have any impact at all. I do not know where they think that people who are exiting the private health care system will go. Maybe they are hoping that that they will not seek medical treatment any more. Maybe that is the government’s preferred option—that people will simply stay home and suffer. Frankly, that is not good enough. It is not good enough to hurt one side of the Medicare system—the private side—by stripping people out of it and to not compensate the public side, who will face the increased demand and the increased costs that come with it. For all of the shaking of the head, it defies logic to say that there will not be an impact.