Name: House of Representatives Chamber (part 2 of 3)
Uploaded: 2026-09-16T02:50:00+00:00
Duration: 14400 s

00:00 - 02:26

Member of the House of Representatives | Warringah (NSW)

The Australian Medical Association has raised two concerns that go directly to this question. First, older Australians may drop their insurance or downgrade their cover because they can no longer afford it. Now, if that is what happens, there are serious consequences because the reality is their need for treatment remains. A person who needs a hip replacement still needs that operation after cancelling their policy. They may then join a hospital waitlist alongside patients already waiting for care.

So there is a consequence to this. The consequences will be for everyone relying on the public system. The Commonwealth may then spend less on the rebates in relation to the private health insurance, but will then pay more when it comes to public hospitals facing additional demand, and governments will face costs elsewhere. So again, just because you say the government says it is going to put the savings into the aged care system, again, that is not a system that keeps people out of hospital. So there are tensions and trade-offs across all of these sectors and more transparency is required.

We know that, for example, patients may then spend longer in pain or reduced mobility while waiting for treatment because the public system cannot cope with the increased demand. So we need to understand those consequences before claiming a saving and certainly before putting forward a justification of saying that this is going to be allocated to increased aged care funding. Because I would suggest it's very likely to be a false economy. The government projects almost three billion dollars in reduced federal expenditure over four years. The AMA questions whether those savings adequately account, in fact, for costs across the broader health system.

And I think that is a really reasonable question. The government should answer it with transparent, independently tested analysis. Its own modelling indicates that approximately 42,000 fewer insured adults by 2028-29 than under unchanged settings. So that is 42,000 people with additional demands on the public health system. It also expects additional public hospital demand, although it describes that increase as marginal, but again, the transparency is important.

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