Bam wrote on Jan 8
th, 2015 at 12:23pm:
bogarde73 wrote on Jan 8
th, 2015 at 9:15am:
It doesn't seem to matter how often we explain things to you people, you just don't get it do you.
To the extent that you disincentivise private education and private health insurance, to that extent you put extra burdens on the public systems.
The modelling says otherwise. Quote:Abolishing the private health insurance rebate could save the budget $3 billion a year, dwarfing the savings that would be generated by introducing a $6 fee for GP visits, according to a think tank.
Quote:The 30 per cent private health insurance rebate was introduced in 1999. Its annual cost has risen faster than any other component of government health spending, from $1.4 billion in 1999-2000 to $5.5 billion in 2012-13.
A Grattan Institute analysis predicts removing the rebate would increase demand for public hospital services by between $1.5 billion and $3.8 billion a year, but suggests the increase would be at the lower end of the range because the Medicare Levy Surcharge (paid by middle and high-income earners who do not have private cover) and the Lifetime Cover policy (a penalty on those who first take out private cover after the age of 30) would provide incentives for people to keep their insurance.
The institute settles on an estimate of $2.5 billion in extra public hospital costs, projecting that scrapping the rebate would produce a net saving of $3 billion.
but if you remove the rebate you would also be ethically required to remove the other part of that policy which was the lifetime cover requirement. That would make the savings smaller.
and as someone who teaches modelling in an area of science that is far more precise than this, taking modelling as gospel is dangerous. REmember all the treasury models of the last ten years that missed by truly astronomical margins?
Your wish to remove the rebate is purely ideological - not financial. With families already paying $4000 a year in private health after the rebate do you think cash-strapped families will continue to do so when you ad another $1500pa to it?
Private health - like private education - SAVES the govt money and has been well understood for a long time. There are bigger savings to be made right across govt expenditure before cutting your own fiscal throat like this.