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

Probably, Senator McLucas says: probably only the healthy people will exit the private health insurance industry. We all know what that will then do to private health costs going forward. That will drive private health insurance costs upwards and upwards. That is right: if the healthy people get out, then those left will be those with high costs. Like any insurance, it only works if the cost is spread widely. It only works if you have a broad and critical mass of people to support it, and the government is undermining that broad and critical mass of people with this measure.

Modelling, including that undertaken by Access Economics, PricewaterhouseCoopers and others, shows that anywhere up to one million people will leave the private health insurance industry—one million out of those 9½ million Australians who have private health insurance. They may well be Senator McLucas’s one million fighting fit, probably young, healthy Australians who leave the industry and that just further accentuates, further highlights the pain and damage that this government is causing by this measure.

The government, if it had any credibility with these measures, would at least have undertaken some of their own modelling and some of their own consideration before introducing them. It would have at least consulted with the affected parties. It would have spoken to the private health insurance industry, to the private health hospital sector, to their state government colleagues even, about the ramifications or the implications. But no, like so many budget matters, this one was plucked out of thin air. It is not good enough to make policy like that. It is not good enough to offset the balance of the public health sector and the private health sector. This bill should quite clearly be defeated.