Rebate Stays, Dental Scheme Makes Comeback
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 31, 2004
The Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, has given his strongest signal that a Labor government would maintain the $2.5 billion private health insurance rebate.
``Our commitment is to keep it, to improve it in the future," he said yesterday.
The rebate is opposed by many in the Left faction as a bad use of public money when public hospitals are struggling and is under review by the party leadership.
Before his announcement, Mr Latham attended a conference ``fringe" event where an academic, Ian McAuley, urged the party to axe the rebate and begin phasing out health insurance.
Mr Latham was asked about the future of the rebate after announcing Labor would revive a national dental scheme, Australian Dental Care, to provide up to 1.3 million extra dental procedures for needy patients.
The scheme will cost about $300 million in its first four years and then $120 million annually. The previous scheme, introduced by the Keating government in 1992 and chopped by the Howard government four years later, cost $100 million a year.
Mr Latham said there were now more than 500,000 people who were waiting up to five years for dental treatment, compared with the 380,000 who waited an average of six months under the previous scheme. ``Dental care is a national responsibility, no matter what John Howard says," Mr Latham said. ``He has left Australia as a waiting-list country with a waiting-list Government."
The Government argued that dental care was a state responsibility when it abandoned the scheme, but Mr Latham retorted that such buck-passing ``doesn't repair rotten gums".
To the cheers of members, he said that the Labor prime minister Ben Chifley had changed the constitution with the support of the then opposition leader, Robert Menzies, to make medical and dental services a federal responsibility. ``If Bob Menzies was alive today he would be seen as too progressive," he said.
Mr Latham said the scheme would provide free check-ups when needed as well as subsidised dental treatment, restorations and dentures.
It would also assess the dental health of people admitted to residential care and establish plans for ongoing care; target indigenous communities ; and provide public awareness programs to help prevention and improve the collection of information on dental needs.
The Federal Government has recently funded a national research program to measure the state of dental health, particularly among disadvantaged people, but is not saying whether this might lead to more involvement in dental care under a Coalition government.
When launching the plan yesterday, Mr Latham was asked whether the scheme would be funded by reducing government spending on the health insurance rebate. This was when Mr Latham confirmed Labor would keep and improve the rebate. He said he would announce a ``comprehensive and full policy when the time is right".
The chief executive of the Australian Health Insurance Association, Russell Schneider, said the pressure by some unions and academics to scrap the rebate made it more important for Labor to give an unequivocal commitment to the rebate.
POLICY WITH BITE
* To provide an extra 1.3 million dental services to concession card patients
* Services to include free check-ups, subsidised treatment, restorations and dentures
* To cut current waiting list of those who can't afford dental care: about 500,000
* Cost: $300 million over four years.
© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald
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