Better health and ageing for all Australians

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Time's up for Labor to come clean on private health

Two days before every Australian taxpayer will receive a tax cut from the Howard Government, Labor still refuses to give a commitment to retain the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate.

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29 June 2003

Time's up for Labor to come clean on private health

Two days before every Australian taxpayer will receive a tax cut from the Howard Government, Labor still refuses to give a commitment to retain the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate.

Today, yet another Labor frontbencher- Lindsay Tanner - failed to commit to retain the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate, instead flagging a vague, uncosted proposal to incorporate dental services within Medicare.

The choice is clear: tax cuts under a Coalition Government or tax rises under Labor.

Winding back the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate is a tax rise.

Labor has been hiding behind the façade of having a review for the past 18 months.

The acting Labor Shadow Health Minister, Jenny Macklin, has continued the practice of her predecessor, refusing to give a commitment to retain the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate, which delivers, on average, $750 a year to the family budget.

Labor does not have the courage to tell the public that it intends to take away or roll back the 30% Private Health Insurance Rebate which gives nearly nine million Australians affordable access to private health care.

If Labor takes the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate off ancillaries families will be $230 a year worse off, making going to the dentist, getting new spectacles or having physiotherapy more expensive. According to the latest figures, each year private health insurance funds pay out around $1 billion in benefits for over 20 million dental services.

Mr Tanner today flagged a vague policy option of extending Medicare to cover dental services claiming "that's a huge gaping hole in the system at the moment", but failed to say that it is the Labor State Governments who are responsible for providing public dental services.

If Mr Tanner is right, Simon Crean should be directing his State Labor colleagues to fix the problem, not getting people on his front bench to float uncosted ideas which Labor can only fund by increasing taxes. The full cost of the Government paying for just dental services currently covered by private health insurance would be in excess of $1.8 billion a year.

Families face a double tax slug under proposals being considered by Labor.

We know an increase in the Medicare levy is on Labor's agenda and also we know that every half a percentage point rise in the Medicare levy would cost an extra $350 a year for a family earning $70,000.

This would be on top of the $750 hit to the family budget from scrapping the 30% Private Health Insurance Rebate - a double tax slug of over $1000 a year under Labor.

Media inquiries: Randal Markey, Media Adviser, Senator Patterson's office, 02 6277 7220.