Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Evans may like to hear that as a direct result of this broken promise, the cost of private health insurance will go up by up to 66.7 per cent immediately. Why is that good public policy on health—that is the question I would ask. The government says that about 40,000 people will leave private health insurance as a result of this measure. There is debate on this, but let us just take their word for it. Let us say that it is 40,000 people that will leave private health insurance as a result of this measure. What does this mean for our public hospitals? It means that there are more people who will present at public hospitals that are already under pressure.

And of course we still have the flow-on consequences of last year’s measure. I asked some questions during the inquiry about how this figure was arrived at, which the minister has mentioned, of 8,000 additional public hospital episodes. I was told that 35 per cent of the 25,000 people will drop private hospital insurance—that is 8,750 additional admissions, presumably. The minister is not very good at her maths. She will not ever make it to be the Treasurer. She might be propaganda minister for Treasury but she will never make it to be the Treasurer.

Debate interrupted.