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

Ms JARRETT (Brisbane) (16:25): I rise today to support the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill. Australia has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. It is underpinned by our great Medicare system, which operates alongside our private health insurance system.

Together they deliver affordable health care to people across my electorate and across Australia when they need it, regardless of their income or their postcode. Ensuring our health system was rebuilt and remains available to all Australians was one of the main reasons I put my hand up to run as a candidate back in 2022. Under those opposite, access to affordable health care was disappearing, and I really wanted to make sure that that didn't happen.

Since 2022, this Labor government has taken significant steps backed by billions of dollars to ensure everyone in our community can get the care they need when they need it. This bill is yet another step towards ensuring government support of our health care is fair, sustainable and targeted to where it's needed most. It's about recognising that our health system has changed, our population has changed and the pressures on government budgets have changed.

Fundamentally, it's about making sure that, when taxpayers subsidise private health insurance, that assistance is based primarily on a person's capacity to pay, not simply on their age. Medicare represents a simple Australian principle—that your access to health care should depend on your need for treatment not the size of your bank account—but, as I said earlier, we also recognise the importance of Australia's private healthcare system.

Private hospitals, private health insurers, doctors, nurses and allied health professionals all form part of the broader health system that gives us access to quality health care. Private health insurance gives millions of Australians greater choice in their health care and helps meet the costs of private hospital treatment and services such as dental, optical and physiotherapy.

As of March this year, almost 12.8 million Australians, almost 46 per cent of the population, had hospital treatment cover, while around 15.5 million Australians, or 55.5 per cent, had some form of general treatment cover. We understand that private health insurance matters. In 2026-27, the government expects to provide around $7.9 billion through private health insurance rebates.

That's a substantial public investment. Whenever governments spend billions of taxpayers' dollars, we have an obligation to ask two questions: Is the money being distributed in the fairest and most effective way? Does it address the needs of the community?

The private health insurance rebate has been part of our health system since 1999. It was originally introduced at a flat 30 per cent rate. In 2025, additional rebates were introduced for older Australians, with the higher rebates applying from the age of 65 and again from the age of 70.

Those arrangements have continued in their various forms since that time. That's almost 20-plus years ago. Today, because of those age based arrangements, two Australians earning the same income and purchasing the same comparable health insurance are paying two different amounts simply because one is older than the other.

That policy is simply very hard to defend. For the period from April 2026 to March 2027, for example, the base tier rebate is approximately 24 per cent for those under 65, 28 per cent for someone aged 65 to 69 and then approximately 32 per cent for someone aged 70 or over. This bill changes that.

From 1 April next year, the additional age based rebate for people aged 65 and over will be removed. Instead, though, Australians with the same income tier will receive the same rebate, regardless of whether they're 45, 65 or 75. Importantly, the rebate itself is not being abolished.

The government is not removing Commonwealth assistance to support private health insurance. The rebate will continue, but it will continue to be income tested, as it is now. Australians with lower incomes will continue to receive greater assistance than Australians with higher incomes.

What changes is the additional subsidy provided solely on the basis of age. There is an important principle behind this reform. Age is not the same thing as financial disadvantage.

There are older Australians living on very modest incomes, and government policy must continue to recognise the different circumstances. There are also younger Australians raising families, paying rent or mortgages, dealing with childcare costs and struggling with various cost-of-living pressures. There are young Australians working two jobs.

There are families trying to save for their first home. There are middle-income workers facing significant household expenses. And there are some older Australians who, after decades of work, have accumulated substantial assets and retirement savings.

So a modern rebate system needs to recognise all those differences in our community. That's why income is a more appropriate measure of capacity to pay than simply someone's age. This reform says that, if two Australians have similar financial circumstances, one should not automatically get a larger rebate than the other purely because of their date of birth.

That's a question of intergenerational fairness, and intergenerational fairness matters. I talked about this in my first speech. Governments make decisions today that will affect Australians well into the future, and younger Australians are helping fund Medicare; they're helping fund aged care; they're helping fund the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; and they're contributing through their taxes to pensions, hospitals and other essential services.

At the same time, many are facing the greatest housing affordability pressures experienced in generations. So, when we design government subsidies, we have a responsibility to ensure that those subsidies remain appropriately targeted. This bill moves the private health insurance rebate towards that principle.

We should also be clear about the facts of this change, as there is a bit of misleading information being spread around, including a fear campaign being waged by those opposite. People aged 65 and over will still receive a significant government-subsidised discount of up to 24 per cent on their private health insurance—the same as the rest of the population. A single person earning $101,000 or less a year currently receives a 24-and-a-bit per cent rebate on their private health insurance premium.

The government will continue to deliver this income based support. The government also expects there will be a very small reduction of about 0.4 per cent in private health insurance membership as a result of these changes. There's another important part of this reform.

It redirects funding towards the ever-growing aged-care sector. The government has stated that the savings of approximately $3 billion from this measure will be reinvested into aged care, and that's an important point. It's not about turning our backs on older Australians.

It's about reconsidering the way government supports older Australians. Instead of maintaining an additional private health insurance subsidy simply because somebody has reached a particular age, we can direct resources towards services that older Australians increasingly rely on. We know the enormous challenges facing aged care.

We know Australians want older people treated with dignity. We know our families want confidence that, when their parents or grandparents need care, that quality care will be available. And we know an ageing population will place increasing demands on aged-care services over the coming decades.

A responsible government must prepare for that reality. This legislation also needs to be understood as part of Labor's broader commitment to Medicare and universal health care—like our Medicare urgent care clinics. There are now 137 of these across Australia, including one in the heart of Brisbane in Kelvin Grove.

You can walk to these clinics and get the care that you need using only your Medicare card. These clinics play a really important role. They take pressure off our hospitals and give families around the country access to health care when they need it.

With the opening of these 137 clinics, four out of five Australians can now live within a 20-minute drive of a Medicare urgent care clinic. We've also delivered more bulk-billing so that people can see a GP for free and record funding for hospitals, and we're making more life-changing medicines cheaper. Labor created Medicare and Labor understands that the foundations of Australia's health system must remain a strong, universal, free public system.

Private health care, though, does have an important and complementary role to play, but private health insurance should never become the price of admission to quality health care in this country. Whether somebody has private health insurance or not, they should know that Medicare is here. Whether somebody lives in Brisbane, regional Queensland, Western Australia, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or in any of our remote communities, they should know that Medicare is there.

Whether they're wealthy or struggling, young or old, employed or not employed, Medicare should be there. That principle matters. Illness doesn't check your bank account before it arrives.

Cancer doesn't check if you have private health insurance. A heart attack doesn't check what your income level is. An accident doesn't wait until it's financially convenient.

Health care is one of the greatest shared responsibilities of a civilised society, and that's why Labor will always defend our universal healthcare system. I also want to acknowledge older Australians directly. Older Australians have worked hard.

They have paid their taxes. They have raised their families. They've contributed to our communities.

They've built businesses. They've staffed our hospitals. They run our shops.

They teach in our schools. They've been part of our factories. They've built our roads, and they've served our communities.

This reform means ensuring that older Australians can continue to rely upon Medicare services, quality hospitals, affordable medicines and dignified aged care. It means protecting pensions and supporting Australians who genuinely need assistance, and it means targeting public resources responsibly so that those services can remain sustainable and be there for the long term.

This bill is about modernisation. It simplifies the rebate. It removes an age distinction that no longer represents the best way to target government assistance.

It still retains income testing. It maintains substantial Commonwealth support for private health insurance, and it redirects significant resources to other areas in need. I hold a lot of mobile offices across my electorate and I doorknock, and there have been times when I've had to have a chat to locals about the rebate change.

I've changed the names, but I'd like to relay to you a conversation I recently had with Lou, who lives in my electorate. She was concerned about the rebate change. She's retired.

She still draws on her super. She gets a very, very small part pension. I also then explained to her that there's Elly, who has private health insurance, which she's only had for just a few years.

It's another bill for her, and their income levels are similar. She is effectively paying more for her health insurance than Lou. Where's the fairness in that?

Not to mention that Elly feels that this is just another example of how the younger generation are being left behind. She's struggling to save to buy her own home. 'Where's the intergenerational fairness in that?' I asked Lou. Most decent people understand this, if you put it in that context, and, as Australians, they accept a fair go for all, as Lou did.

Our communities are changing. Brisbane has one of the youngest electorates in the country, but we also have our fair share of older Australians. We believe older Australians deserve security and dignity, but we also believe younger Australians deserve a fair go.

This bill seeks to balance those responsibilities. It modernises an existing subsidy rather than abolishing it. It makes income, not simply age, a central determinant of the rebate.

It improves the sustainability of Commonwealth expenditure. And it allows billions of dollars to be redirected to our aged-care sector, which is under stress and needs to be there for the long term. These are sensible principles, these are responsible principles and they are consistent with Labor's belief that Australia's health system should remain strong, universal and available for Australians today and into the future.

For those reasons, I commend this bill to the House.