Since the rejection of the Emissions Trading Scheme by the Senate, we have not heard a lot about the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time.’ As Labor ‘shop around’ and use different policy announcements like a focus group, we have started hearing a lot more about health. As Liberals, we relish this debate.
Labor’s record on health is nothing to be proud of – especially over the last decade. Labor particularly fails to appreciate the important role that private health insurance has in supporting our health system. Private health takes a massive burden off the public health system. Private hospitals comprise around 40% of hospital beds and undertake around 70% of elective surgery. To focus solely on public hospitals is like talking about education while ignoring the contribution of Catholic and independent schools.
Labor’s ideological hostility to private health was on display again this past fortnight when Labor broke an explicit election promise not to cut the private health insurance rebate. The Senate again stood firm against Labor’s attacks on private health insurance.
Later today, the National Press Club will host a leaders’ debate on health policy. Labor will try to dress up its massive GST tax grab and its own failures at the state level across Australia as health reform. Even Kevin Rudd says the Labor state governments are not up to scratch on health – but provides no evidence that a federal Labor government would be any better. We have all heard Labor’s promises before.
The Liberal record on health is outstanding – and we are rightly proud of it.
As well as introducing the private health insurance rebate, the Coalition government oversaw a massive increase in national health funding while in office. While Tony Abbott was Health Minister, federal spending on public hospitals increased by $10 billion.
The Howard Government did its part supporting the entire health system – and not just on hospitals. Liberals increased spending by billions on Medicare; introduced the Medicare Safety Net to ensure out-of-pocket expenses were affordable for Australian families; and oversaw to a threefold increase in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which funded billions of dollars in new medicines.
As Tony Abbott has pointed out time and time again, one of the real problems has been in the increase in health managers and bureaucrats. Just take a look at this graph which shows a 69% increase in the number of medical administrators in the first part of this decade. I spoke about this last year in the Senate.
Kevin Rudd’s so-called plan does nothing to put extra money into public hospitals and nothing to reduce the number of bureaucrats.
The failure of state Labor Governments to adequately manage our hospitals has led to long waiting lists and ‘ghost’ wards. A takeover by their Labor cousins in Canberra will not change any of this.