The Australian Greens have called for a pause on health insurance premiums during the COVID-19 crisis, and for the government to redirect the private health insurance rebate into the public system to assist in delivering critical care.
\n\u201cAustralians should not be paying premiums for a product that can\u2019t be used for its primary purpose, especially when millions of households are facing challenging financial circumstances,\u201d Dr Richard Di Natale, Greens health spokesperson said today.
\n\u201cMost people cannot use their cover at this time due to restrictions on non-urgent elective surgery. Private health insurers are charging their customers for a product that in most cases, can\u2019t be used.
\n\u201cPremiums must be paused to provide people with much-needed financial respite.
\n\u201cSome companies are delaying premium increases, and others have announced some measures to suspend policies or access relief on premiums, but otherwise it is business as usual: insurers collecting premiums, along with the taxpayer-funded private health insurance rebate.
\n\u201cThe private health insurance rebate costs Australian around $7 billion annually.
\n\u201cThe need for a robust and well-funded public health system has never been more apparent than it is today. At a time when our public health system needs every resource it can get, the government should not be diverting funds into the pockets of private health insurers.
\n\u201cThe government must stop forking out millions of dollars of public money for private health insurance and reinvest it all in saving Australian lives in the public hospital system.
\n\u201cThe Greens have long advocated for the abolition of the private health insurance rebate, with that money to be directed back into the public health system to benefit everyone. The case for doing so has never been clearer,\u201d Dr Di Natale concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian Greens have called for a pause on health insurance premiums during the COVID-19 crisis, and for the government to redirect the private health insurance rebate into the public system to assist in delivering critical care. \u201cAustralians should not be paying premiums for a product that can\u2019t be used for its primary purpose, especially … Continue reading “Pause health insurance payments & abolish PHI rebate: Greens”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}