Means-Test Is About Fairness
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said the private health insurance rebate should be means-tested to bring about fairness for taxpayers.
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Thursday, February 9, 2012
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said the private health insurance rebate should be means-tested to bring about fairness for taxpayers.
“It is not fair for low and middle income earning Australians to be subsidising the health insurance of households with incomes of more than $250,000 a year,” she said.
Ms Plibersek said, contrary to Mr Dutton's claims, the Government first announced its policy to introduce a means-test of the private health insurance rebate in the 2009-10 Budget and took the policy to the 2010 election.
“Nearly eight million private health insurance policy holders won’t be affected by the changes at all.”
Treasury modelling says that 99.7% of policy holders will keep their cover if the government is successful with its plans to means-test the rebate.
Individuals earning $83,000 or less, or families earning $166,000 or less, would not be affected at all in the next financial year.
In the next financial year, the rebate would only cut out completely for singles once they were earning more than $129,000 a year. A family would have to be earning $258,000 or more in the next financial year before they’d lose the rebate altogether.
For more information, please contact the Minister’s Office on 02 6277 7220
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