Intergenerational claptrap

What a farcical assertion!

The much-touted 30 per cent rebate of the Howard Government, supposedly aimed at encouraging "ordinary" Australians to take out private health cover has proved to be an expensive and less than equitable failure.

The rebate is concentrated in households with the highest income levels. About half the subsidy goes to the top 20 per cent of high income earners.

Julie Smith, Senior Research Fellow of The Australia Institute has highlighted this in detail in her discussion paper.

Ms Smith stated that "The cost of providing subsidies for private health insurance … is draining funds from public hospitals and other public health priorities."

"While public sector cutbacks over the last decade have resulted in queues in public hospitals and the axing of public dental care services, the Federal Government now provides a large public subsidy through the private health insurance rebate for high-income earners to jump hospital queues, obtain cosmetic surgery and dental care, and pay for their gym club membership. Each year, the private health insurance rebate alone is drawing around $2 billion of government funding away from public health care provision.

"Current Coalition health policy directs an increasing portion of scarce Commonwealth health funds towards the top end of the income stream regardless of demonstrated health needs and public health priorities.

"Present deregulatory trends point to an emerging policy of allowing private health insurance funds to cream off the most profitable part of the Australia's health insurance market, while leaving an underfunded public hospital system to provide care for the bulk of those with urgent or chronic health care needs."

There can be no doubt that the health sector, as well as Centrelink, is being readied for sale.

The Report claims that the government has a "social safety net that encourages working-age people to find jobs and remain employed" and "encourages mature age participation in the labour force …"

Yet, in its blind adherence to "economic rationalism" the very same government has presided over the greatest loss of full-time jobs in the nation's history, has encouraged businesses to replace permanent positions with part-time, casual and short-term contract staff. The Government has largely ignored the massive and continuing retrenchment or laying off of mature and/or experienced staff by business, other than for an occasional token scattering of vapid news releases or expensive colour brochures at the problem.

The Report makes particular mention of the "continuing growth in (the cost of) the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme" but there is no current debate in Australia about prescription drugs, their high cost, how to pay for them or the practices of the billion-dollar, largely foreign pharmaceutical industry.

Crucial questions that have not been asked include: What drugs are we getting for our money? Are the new drugs on the market really better than the old drugs? How are consumers supposed to know which drugs are best when according to the study by the (US) National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, only 15 percent of the 1,035 drugs approved by US regulators between 1989 and 2000 were based on a new molecular entity and deemed by the Food and Drug Administration as ''providing significant improvement over existing medicines.''

Perhaps the debate about the PBS should not be how can we pay for all these drugs, but rather, is the current system working and are consumers and patients who spend billions of dollars each year on prescription drugs really getting their money's worth?

For those with the eyes to see, the Intergenerational Report is a document of misrepresentation based on invalid assumptions to justify the discredited ideology and callous budget decisions of an unfeeling and visionless government.