Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for the question. I'm happy to explain the government's rationale for the decisions we put into the budget on Tuesday night and I announced a few weeks ago. I don't accept the figure that the member has used in her question. I've seen the industry put out a figure like that. I can't find any way in which that is going to be real. We've been very clear in the modelling that we have prepared, based on different health insurance products out there, that the average impact of the change that we've announced would be somewhere between $230 and $250 per year, not the figures that are bandied about by the industry.

Nonetheless, we have taken this difficult decision in a challenging budget environment for these reasons. We don't think there is a strong policy rationale to pay different Australians different levels of support for their private health insurance membership, when they are on the same income, simply because of age.

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