GRAEME GOODINGS, HOST: Older Australians are being urged to get a new COVID booster. Joining me now is Federal Health Minister Mark Butler. Minister good morning. Thanks for your time.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Good morning, Graeme.
GOODINGS: Just how important is it for old Australians to get a booster?
BUTLER: We know older Australians are more vulnerable to the effects of COVID than other members of the population. They're more vulnerable to severe disease, are more vulnerable to hospitalisation and, tragically, still more vulnerable to dying of COVID. These vaccines are still very highly effective to stop that severe disease and cut hospitalisation rates and the risk of death in particular. We've got a new vaccine on the market now. Your listeners are only too familiar, I suspect, with this long running saga of COVID for years now. As COVID mutates into a new variant, the vaccines have to be adapted. The new vaccine, which is on the market now available at your general practice or at your pharmacy, is particularly built around the predominant variant of COVID, which is known as JN.1. It’s highly effective and the advice remains the same. If you're over the age of 75, it's recommended you get a booster every six months because you are more vulnerable to severe disease from COVID than others.
Now, more than four out of every five people over the age of 75 have not had a dose in the past six months. Many of your listeners of that age out there are due a booster. The advice is to think about getting one very seriously. If you're aged between 65 and 75, it's recommended you get one every year but still, the vast bulk have not done that as well. We know COVID cases are on the rise now across Australia, that's pretty common now. COVID waves tend to come every 4 to 6 months. As we start getting busier and mixing with family and friends, there tends to be an uptick in COVID cases over the Christmas New Year period. Again, be very careful around people who are vulnerable to the disease. If you think you might have COVID, get a test. Don't visit an aged care facility as much as you want to go and see your loved ones at this time of the year. Just be careful about the possibility of infecting someone who's vulnerable.
GOODINGS: Do you think there's a level of complacency regarding COVID? I mean, it's no longer on the front pages of the newspapers.
BUTLER: It's barely in the newspapers at all, let alone the front page, Graeme. I think communities right across the world have had enough of COVID for all of the years of the emergency phase of the pandemic. There's no doubt all of us are human and we want to put this thing behind us as much as possible. It was a very traumatic period. There was a lot of death. There was a lot of dislocation, a lot of economic suffering. Kids not being able to go to school, aged care facilities, lockdowns. Of course, we want to put that behind us. But it is still a health threat, particularly to older Australians or to other adults who have a compromised immunity. It is still killing people, certainly not in the numbers we saw a couple of years ago, but it is still a significant health issue and a health issue for our hospitals as well. It's a reminder, just particularly if you're older, think about updating your vaccine. There's a highly effective new vaccine on the market now. If you're unsure, then you can go to the health and aged care website or talk to your GP or your pharmacist.
GOODINGS: I think it was about a year ago that World Health Organization said it no longer recommends COVID vaccine boosters beyond the first booster shot for adults under 50 with no underlying health conditions. Is that a similar feeling in the Australian Health Department?
BUTLER: That's right. The advice for under 65 is you're eligible, if you want to get a booster then you can certainly still get it free of charge, it's on the National Immunisation Program. But there's no particular advice for people under the age of 65 unless of course, you have compromised immunity, in which case you are recommended to get one every year. But over 65s, certainly over 75-year-olds the advice is to get regular boosters to protect yourself against severe disease.
GOODINGS: Minister, if we can move on to another subject, earlier this month you threatened a crackdown on sneaky price gouging practises by our private health insurers. Where is that out at the moment?
BUTLER: I want to pay tribute to an organisation called Choice that your listeners might be familiar with. It's been operating for many years now in the interests of consumers and it lifted the lid on this practise. It's essentially what we describe as “phoenixing”. A number of the insurers, they'll have a particular gold product - it might be a gold product for singles in South Australia, for example. They shut that product down and then they reopen it a short time after at a much higher price. So, if you're a new entrant to the scheme, you're paying a lot more than the person in the hospital bed next to you who's got exactly the same coverage from exactly the same insurer but happened to enter it at a different time. The reason the insurance companies do this is that the law provides that they are only able to lift their premium prices with my approval, with the Health Minister's approval of the day. They’re basically doing this to get around it. It's pretty sneaky. It's pretty underhanded. It's very widespread. After Choice did an article in their magazine earlier this year, the Ombudsman was asked to look at it, and he provided a report to me a couple of weeks ago that confirmed the scale of it. I've said very clearly to the insurance companies this has to stop. If they don't recognise their social responsibility to the community, they receive billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to underwrite their business, as well as all of the contributions your listeners make has private health insurance members. If they're not going to stop this, then next year I will look at changing the law to require them to stop it.
GOODINGS: Private health companies are obviously pushing to increase their premiums. The final decision rests with you. When will you make that decision?
BUTLER: The process we go through started several weeks ago. The insurance companies provide me and my department with a claim about how much they want to lift premiums by next year. I get very detailed advice about that from my department, but also a body called the Prudential Regulatory Authority, or APRA, which advises me on the degree to which all of the private health insurance companies, there's 29 of them, the degree to which they are sustainable, they're viable, what their profits are, how much capital they've got, and also how much of their income they're paying out in benefits to their members. I get all of that advice. I've already received the first round of that advice and have written back to all of the insurance companies over the last couple of weeks and said that I think their claim needs to be revised. They need to sharpen their pencil. If you want to use that term, Graeme. They're coming back to me in early January. I'll have a look at what they have to say. Last, summer I went back to them twice because the first time they came back to me, I didn't think all of them had sharpened their pencils sufficiently and we ended up with a premium rise earlier this year of about 3 per cent, which at the time was substantially below what they were initially seeking, but also below inflation. I'm really conscious that, of course, we need a viable private health insurance industry, a viable private hospital sector, but households are doing it really tough. Their household budgets are under real pressure, and I want to make sure that they are the most important part of this process.
GOODINGS: There's no question with the cost-of-living crisis, people under so much pressure that when it comes to private health some are considering downgrading or eliminating it altogether. It's going to put a huge burden on the public system. You've also got to factor in the fact that you're going to have to make this decision on private health cost increases possibly just ahead of the next federal election?
BUTLER: I have to do it when I have to do it, Graeme. Of course, we're all conscious of election timeframes, but I've got a responsibility as the Health Minister under the law to make a decision that's in the best interests of policyholders, so members of private health insurance funds, but also to make sure that the private hospital sector and the private health insurance industry are viable as well. I'll do that as I would any year, whether there is an election or not.
GOODINGS: Final issue, Minister, then we'll let you go. The situation with our private hospitals in particular Healthscope. They have 38 hospitals nationwide. I think there are four in and around Adelaide. What is happening there?
BUTLER: You're right. They’re the second biggest private operator after Ramsay. The Catholic sector is a little bigger, but they are a significant part of the industry here in Australia. They're owned by an overseas investment fund, private equity fund and there’s no question that they are saying publicly that they're looking at their business pretty closely and the debt that they have and all those sorts of things. They are a big commercial international operator that is always got an eye to their profitability. The concern for us is that they play a very important part in the system. You're right, they've got four hospitals here, including Flinders Private, Ashford, Memorial Hospitals your listeners will be very, very familiar with. We're very keen to make sure that they keep doing their important work. Now they're in a bit of a dispute right now with one of the big insurers, Bupa, that South Australians are very familiar with because it took over the old Mutual Community many years ago, and many South Australians were members of that fund. It's not uncommon for two big, sophisticated commercial players to have a pretty serious arm wrestle about their contracts, that's their job. But at the moment, Healthscope has said that it'll tear the contract up and it won't service Bupa members without them having to pay pretty significant out of pocket costs. I've said to them this is just unacceptable you've got to get back to the table. I've used my powers to get the Ombudsman involved, and the Ombudsman has powers to bring them to the table and mediate. I'm really pleased that process has restarted. I understand they've been meeting again because we can't have two really big players in the health system not recognising that for all of the commercial interests that they might have their number one job must be to look after their members and look after their patients. That's the privilege of being a private commercial player in the Australian healthcare system. Yes, you can look after your commercial interests, but at the end of the day, patients have to come first.
GOODINGS: Minister, it looks like you've got a lot of work ahead of you.
BUTLER: Thanks, Graeme. Merry Christmas to you and your listeners.
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