The Doctors Reform Society today announced they will be lobbying against the 30% private health insurance rebate. The doctors will be contacting all Senators in an attempt to have this legislation blocked when it goes before the Senate.

"It’s outrageous that the Government is proposing to spend $1.6 billion a year of public money to try to prop up the inefficient private health insurance industry at a time when people can wait all day in Casualty Departments of Public Hospitals, and still not be seen," said the President of the Doctors Reform Society, Dr Con Costa.

"It’s a public scandal that so much tax-payers money is being handed over to what is, in effect, a failed private industry," said Dr Costa.

"If the $1.6 billion was given to public hospitals each year it would halve all hospital waiting lists throughout Australia," said Dr Costa.

"Most of this money will go to high income people who already have private health insurance. Seventy percent of people with private health insurance earn over $70,000 per year," said Dr Costa.

"Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett said that the Howard Government’s previous private health insurance subsidy of $1.5 billion was ‘money down the drain’. We predict that if this 30% rebate scheme goes ahead it will be another wasteful and ineffectual use of tax-payer’s money that should be going to public hospitals," said Dr Costa.

"Mr Howard says that Medicare stays in its entirety, but by spending huge amounts of public money on the private system, he is engineering a two-tiered health system that our patients can ill afford," said Dr Costa.

12 November, 1998

author/seconders: C.Costa, T.van Lieshout, A.Gunn