Article excerpt:
UP to 100,000 people could forgo health cover because of budget cuts to the private health insurance rebate -- four times more than Treasury estimates -- a report by Access Economics has concluded. The report, commissioned by Catholic Health Australia, described official projections of the impact of the cuts to the insurance rebate as at the "lower end of the range of possibilities".
"We could not rule out a fall in coverage of 1 per cent of the (health fund) membership ... in other words, coverage could decline by 100,000 from where it would otherwise have been," the report says.
The Rudd government announced plans in last month's budget to claw back $1.8billion in subsidies to the private health sector by means-testing the 30 per cent health insurance rebate, in its second successive year of cuts to the industry. The government will earn another $150million by raising the Medicare levy surcharge tax penalty that applies to singles earning more than $90,000 and families earning more than $180,000 who do not take private health cover.
Article summary:
The government has forecast that only 25,000 people will drop their hospital cover as a result of the changes, but the private health industry has challenged their forecasts.
