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Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover (Read 444 times)
whiteknight
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Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Jul 23rd, 2019 at 4:53am
 

Scrap Medicare, mandate private health cover: NIB boss   Sad

Jul 23, 2019  Financial Review

The head of one of Australia's biggest health insurers has called on the government to abolish Medicare and make private health insurance  compulsory, with the government paying the premiums of those unable to meet the costs themselves.   Shocked

In a radical solution to the growing crisis facing private health funds, Mark Fitzgibbon, managing director of NIB, said his proposal would protect the most vulnerable, while allowing the private sector to flourish without competition from Medicare, which he called a "government monopoly".

"[A] sensible policy approach would be to make private health insurance compulsory for all Australians with taxation devoted to subsidising the premiums for those who would otherwise be left behind. That is, high-income earners would at one end of the scale pay the entire premium while at the other, those with low income fully subsidised," Mr Fitzgibbon writes in an op-ed in The Australian Financial Review.

He claimed this would address an impending affordability crisis springing from the ageing of the population, as the number of people of working, taxpaying age falls in proportion to the number of ageing and increasingly sick retirees.
Increasingly expensive

Mr Fitzgibbon's potentially divisive suggestion comes on the heels of a report from think tank the Grattan Institute, published last week, which described the private health insurance industry as being in a "death spiral" as younger people abandon the increasingly expensive private market. Between December 2016 and December 2018, the report found, the number of 20-29-year-olds with hospital cover had fallen by 8 per cent.


"Governments have failed to clearly define the role of private health insurance since Medicare was introduced in the 1980s. The upshot is we have a muddled healthcare system that is riddled with inconsistencies and perverse incentives," the report, co-authored by former health department secretary Stephen Duckett, said.   Sad

The Grattan Institute argued the government had two options: either abandon "inequitable" subsidies, such as the 30 per cent premium rebate, entirely, or subsidise the private sector as a genuine alternative to Medicare. While not explicitly taking a position, the report's arguments were weighted towards abolishing government subsidies.

But Mr Fitzgibbon said abandoning subsidies would immediately add 30 per cent to the cost of insurance premiums – the amount currently met by the government's health insurance rebate at a cost of $6 billion a year – leading to an exodus from private health funds and rocketing Medicare costs.

"Naturally that would hurt the sector," he said. "But the other big consequence is all these people would fall back on the public system."

Mr Fitzgibbon put the cost of abolishing the rebate to Medicare at around $15 billion – though he did not say how he arrived at that figure.

While Mr Fitzgibbon accepted his proposal would be politically divisive, he rejected the suggestion that the life-and-death nature of healthcare was an argument against privatisation.

"I don't know why health insurance is any more life-and-death than the food we eat and the homes we live in, and we don't make that a government monopoly," he told the Financial Review in a separate interview. "In this [proposal] people still get healthcare, it's just that rather than doing it through a social, government-run insurance system, they do it through a private system. So healthcare doesn't disappear."

He denied his radical proposal was evidence of an industry in a death spiral, insisting under current rules his business was doing well, and had not seen the 8 per cent reduction in the number of younger customers experienced by the industry as a whole.
'Doing well'

"Under the suite of policy reforms that have been put in place, the industry is doing well. We’re doing well as a business," he said. "The medium to longer term death spiral that Grattan is talking about is probably more applicable to the public financing of healthcare."

Siddharth Parameswaran, an analyst with JP Morgan, said on the current trajectory things were getting "tougher" for private health insurers, and some change was necessary. But he said the Grattan Institute's proposal to remove subsidies entirely was unlikely to become government policy.

"If nothing changes, it will probably get tougher for private health insurers. I think the whole industry would like to see some action taken to improve sustainability of the system," he said.

“If you were to totally remove government support, I think you’d have to get rid of the forced cross-subsidies as well, which currently make the policies affordable for the elderly. I don’t think that’s on the horizon for either side of politics. The reality is that this magnitude of change would be very difficult to achieve. There are many interested parties in the health sector.
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whiteknight
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #1 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 4:55am
 
Leave Medicare and bulk-billing alone.   Angry
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Valkie
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #2 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 5:09am
 
It woukd be far better to
1) get rid of health insurance companies and put the premiums into government hospitals.
2) get rid of the AMA and allow doctors to grow in numbers
3) make doctors charge realistic prices for the "services?" They provide.
4) ensure tgat politicians and public servants keep their grubby little hands off any money going into hospitals.

Health funds are rip off masters
They charge offensively exorbitant fees and don't even cover you for a sizable portion of the doctors bills.
Doctors are nothing but overpaid mechanics, who rely on the human body healing itself.

If it weren't for penicillin and other drugs, doctors woukd still be running around shaking little rattles and letting blood with leeches.

Bring them back to earth.
They are overpaid for the damage they do.
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I HAVE A DREAM
A WONDERFUL, PEACEFUL, BEAUTIFUL DREAM.
A DREAM OF A WORLD THAT HAS NEVER KNOWN ISLAM
A DREAM OF A WORLD FREE FROM THE HORRORS OF ISLAM.

SUCH A WONDERFUL DREAM
O HOW I WISH IT WERE TRU
 
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macman
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #3 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 8:50am
 
Valkie wrote on Jul 23rd, 2019 at 5:09am:
It woukd be far better to
1) get rid of health insurance companies and put the premiums into government hospitals.
2) get rid of the AMA and allow doctors to grow in numbers
3) make doctors charge realistic prices for the "services?" They provide.
4) ensure tgat politicians and public servants keep their grubby little hands off any money going into hospitals.

Health funds are rip off masters
They charge offensively exorbitant fees and don't even cover you for a sizable portion of the doctors bills.
Doctors are nothing but overpaid mechanics, who rely on the human body healing itself.

If it weren't for penicillin and other drugs, doctors woukd still be running around shaking little rattles and letting blood with leeches.

Bring them back to earth.
They are overpaid for the damage they do.


Think youv'e got it right there.
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rhino
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #4 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 12:39pm
 
Mandatory private health cover will result in massively increased charges and premiums, theres no dispute about that. The main issue with the public health system is the resources being sucked out of it by people unwilling to make lifestyle changes. Something needs to change but doing away with the public health system wont benefit anyone except the parasites who will be exempt from mandatory insurance and will continue to consume proportionally high health resources.
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Bam
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #5 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 12:45pm
 
A better idea: abolish the private health insurance industry and put the savings into a fully-funded Medicare. It would cost less because any service that is privatised for profit is always more expensive than a public service that is not for profit.
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You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to hold opinions that you can defend through sound, reasoned argument.
 
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juliar
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #6 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 1:40pm
 
Medicare cost the EARTH today as it is freely abused.

So where does the money come from to pay for it ? The Swiss cheese minds of the Lefties do not have a clue.

The govt gives a small reward to those who take out private health insurance.

Private health insurance is great if you have to go to hospital.

Of course the GetUp! propaganda being squawked by the parrot BlackDay is all Socialist based with money coming from that great bottomless bucket of money somewhere up in the sky.

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« Last Edit: Jul 23rd, 2019 at 2:00pm by juliar »  
 
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tickleandrose
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #7 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 1:59pm
 
juliar wrote on Jul 23rd, 2019 at 1:40pm:
Medicare cost the EARTH today as it is freely abused.

So where does the money come from to pay for it ? The Swiss cheese mind of the Lefties do not have a clue.

The govt gives a small reward to those who take out private health insurance.

Private health insurance is great if you have to go to hospital.

Of course the GetUp! propaganda being squawked by the parrot BlackDay is all Socialist based with money coming from that great bottomless bucket of money somewhere up in the sky.



No its not.  In fact, if you look at any measure.  Our medicare lead system cost fair less per capital, and achieves better outcomes than the system they have in USA. 

However, I do believe there is a role for public and private hospital system in Australia.  But, I do believe, that if people choose to pay for private health, then in the spirit of free market and conservative ideology, the government should bud out, and let the individuals make up their mind and pay for it.  So, NO private health insurance rebate, and at the same time NO medicare surcharge for not having private health insurance. 

A small conservative government should not subsidize privately funded companies.  Period. 
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whiteknight
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #8 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 2:00pm
 
We know the coalition can't be trusted with medicare and bulk-billing.   Sad
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juliar
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #9 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 2:04pm
 
Gosh the reclusive inarticulate union propaganda parrot BlackDay takes a break from squawking GetUp! propaganda to slip out of the DARK SIDE to utter and mutter something or other and then quickly retreat back into the safety of the DARK SIDE.

A class war is being waged by the Lefties as they do not like people who get private health insurance getting much better heath service and not having to wait for years to get into hospital.

Medicare is extremely expensive and can the Australian economy afford it ?
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whiteknight
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #10 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 2:07pm
 
We want the doctor that does the bulk-billing.   Sad
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juliar
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Re: Scrap Medicare, Mandate Private Health Cover
Reply #11 - Jul 23rd, 2019 at 2:15pm
 
Silly old BlackDay is way out of his depth digging himself deeper into his hole of lies with each appearance from the DARK SIDE.

Propaganda Parrots are all like this as they don't understand a word of the garbage they happily squawk.
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