GOVERNMENT CANNOT RULE OUT LONGER WAITING LISTS FOR CONSTITUENTS
The Member for Berowra, Philip Ruddock said today that the Rudd Government has confirmed it cannot guarantee that local constituents will have to wait longer for public hospital treatment as a result of its changes to the Medicare surcharge levy policy.
“What we are seeing here is a reversion to the past by Labor where the decisions they are making with respect to health are more about ideology than addressing the real health issues in Australia. This decision has nothing to do with good policy and will affect my constituents,” Mr Ruddock said.
“In the late nineties there was a significant fall in the number of Australians who had private health insurance and at that point in time the Howard government was legitimately concerned about the issues surrounding the sustainability of the health system.
“The government of the day brought in the 30 per cent rebate and then lifetime cover and the rates of private health insurance rose from 30 per cent up to 44-45 per cent where they remain today.
“However, the Rudd Government’s decision risks a return to the downward spiral we saw in private health insurance during the early 1990s, when Labor was in power and had this philosophical opposition to providing private health insurance.
“This decision is going to have serious consequences for the public health system and to my electorate and Labor has acknowledged that today with the refusal to guarantee that no staff will wait longer for public hospital treatment as a result of the changes to the Medicare surcharge levy,” Philip Ruddock said.