Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026

Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (12:02): I rise to speak on the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026. Let me be clear from the outset: the coalition opposes this bill. We oppose it because, for all the language about modernising, this bill does one thing.

It cuts the private health insurance rebate for older Australians. Make no mistake: this is an $11 billion tax on the private health insurance of older Australians. Let me explain what that means in plain terms.

Right now, our system recognises something simple and fair: that older Australians use more health care and that as a country we want to keep them in private cover, not push them into an overstretched public system. So, since 2005, under the Howard government, Australians over 65 have received a higher rebate on their private health premiums. This bill takes that help away.

Under this bill, the higher rebate for older Australians is unwound. For Australians aged 65 to 69, the rebate is cut by around four per cent. For those over the age of 70, it is cut by as much as eight per cent.

Every Australian aged 65 and over with private cover will pay more—not because their income changed, not because their circumstances changed, but simply because of their age. The timing could hardly be worse, because this cut lands on top of the premium increase already expected in April 2027. Put the two together and older Australians on gold cover face a combined increase of up to 21.3 per cent.

For a couple aged 70 and over on gold cover, that is up to $1,614 more a year. For a single older Australian it's up to $807. On the government's own numbers, that is the biggest rise in private health costs for older Australians on record, and this hits 3.1 million older Australians.

The government did not even bother to work out how many of them are pensioners until stakeholders forced it to. Now we know: 1.2 million of the older Australians this bill hits are pensioners living on a fixed income, with no real way to absorb a shock like this. Let me put it the way older Australians will feel it.

Under this bill, older Australians will pay more, wait longer and get less. They will pay more because their premiums will go up. They will get less because industry research suggests that more than 250,000 older Australians will drop or downgrade their cover.

They'll walk away from the gold and silver cover that pays for the very procedures they are likely to need: joint replacements, cataract surgery and scopes that catch cancer early. And they will wait longer because every older Australian who drops or downgrades their cover goes back on the public system and on an elective surgery waiting list that is already too long.

The government's own modelling concedes that at least 44,000 older Australians will give up their cover altogether, and even that almost certainly understates it. That is not a rounding error; that is a wave of older Australians walking away from private health and into a public queue. Here is the most cynical part of it all.

The government is banking on the rest of them not leaving. Its own department has conceded that older Australians are so dependent on their cover and so fearful of losing access to care, that most will have no real choice but to grit their teeth and pay. So this policy is built on the vulnerability of older Australians.

That is not fairness. That is exploitation. These are not abstract numbers.

These are people who have rung into radio stations to say that this will cost them, that they will have to turn their heating off in winter and that they will have to give up the one meal out that they still allow themselves. Every one of them held their cover through every premium rise. They did the responsible thing and they are the ones this government has chosen to hit.

Here is the part the government would rather not talk about. The government calls this a saving. It is not a saving; it is a cost shift.

Independent modelling by Affinity Consulting, which was handed to this very government, shows that for every dollar the Commonwealth saves by cutting this rebate the public hospital system is charged about $1.20. The cost does not disappear; it moves from the Commonwealth to the states. Once you count everyone that is expected to give up their cover, that cost to the states climbs to more than $8 billion a year.

So let us call this what it is. It's a false economy that's designed to make the Treasurer's budget look a little better on paper. More pressure on emergency departments, more ambulances ramped outside them, longer waits for surgeries, poor outcomes for patients—this is not reform.

It is an invoice posted from Canberra to every state and territory in this country. The government did all of this without doing their homework. Its own impact analysis was so thin that the Office of Impact Analysis could only bring itself to call it adequate.

When you are reshaping the health cover of every older Australian in the country, 'adequate' is not good enough, and nowhere will this be felt harder than in regional Australia. Regional private hospitals keep their doors open on the high-volume procedures older Australians rely on, such as joint replacements and cataract surgeries. In many country towns, the private hospital is the only hospital doing that surgery.

Take those patients away, and if it closes that care does not move down the road. It completely disappears. The government will tell you that this is really about fairness.

It says that it is fixing generational inequity by basing the rebate on income instead of age, but there is nothing fair about it. The rebate is already based on income. Higher earners already receive less.

Keeping older Australians in private cover is exactly what takes pressure off the public system that every taxpayer of every generation pays for. Push them out, and younger Australians do not save a cent. They inherit longer public waiting lists and a bigger public hospital bill, and it does not stop there.

Our own Senate inquiry has heard that this policy is putting private maternity services under even more pressure at a time when they are already closing across the country. A cut sold as helping young Australians could end up making it harder and more expensive for a young family to have a baby. Do not just take the coalition's word for this.

This bill is opposed by Private Healthcare Australia, the Members Health Fund Alliance, National Seniors Australia, Australian Private Hospitals Association, Catholic Health Australia and the Australian Medical Association. The insurers, hospitals, doctors and seniors are all telling this government the same thing: this is the wrong policy at the wrong time and it's hitting the wrong people.

Let me be very clear about where the coalition stands. We believe in a strong private health system working alongside a strong public one. We support genuine reform.

We support real transparency so patients know what they will pay before they walk through the door. But this is not reform; this is a cut dressed up in the language of reform. Calling it 'modernising' does not change one dollar of what it does to an older Australian's premium.

This bill is part of a pattern. This is a government that keeps deciding which Australians are worth helping, and older Australians keep finding themselves at the back of the line, told to pay more for their private cover, left waiting for their aged care and at every turn left behind. The coalition will not stand for it.

We are opposing this bill in this place, we are fighting it through the Senate inquiry, which reports in October, and we are calling on this government to do the right thing and scrap this damaging policy altogether. We stand with older Australians who have worked and saved and done the right thing and who are now being asked to pay more for less. The government can call this 'modernising the rebate', but there is nothing modern about making older Australians pay more for the cover they have held for decades.

Pay more, wait longer, get less—that is what this bill delivers, and that is why the coalition opposes it. For all these reasons, I urge the government, even now, to think again about the older Australians it is asking to foot the bill.