Hit job on oldies not healthy

APHA Opinion Editorial published in the Herald Sun.

THE message from the Albanese Government is clear. Don't get old. But if you do definitely don't get sick.

The Federal Budget's breach of faith on two decades of making private health insurance more achievable for those using it the most is a disaster waiting to happen. Not just for oldies. For everyone.

More than 3 million Australians aged 65 and over hold private health insurance. Whether they are pensioners, part-pensioners or self-funded retirees, they are typically on very fixed incomes. Afterall, their eligibility for the rebate is means tested.

Today 70% of people over 65 with private health insurance live on $55,000 or less. Cutting the rebate will see a couple aged 70 pay $1,614 a year more next year.

Last year, this age cohort accounted for over 2.5 million private hospital admissions. At the same time, waiting lists in public hospitals are 940,000 people deep. Staggeringly, some 20,000 public patients have been waiting longer than the clinical timeframe for their condition.

Emergency Department dysfunction, bed block, waiting lists and taxpayer costs will be worse as a result of this change. Forcing older Australians, who are higher users of high-end hospital care, from private to public hospitals will be devastating for them and the health system.

The government says 44,000 will drop their health insurance entirely. But it refuses to release the sums for this claim. Others suggest it's more like 60,000-plus. That's bad enough, but many more are expected to downgrade their health cover from Gold to Silver.

Silver doesn't cover the things oldies need, like cataracts and joint replacements. So, even if they stay in private health, they will still end up in the public system where the current wait times for cataract surgery is up to two-and-a-half years and typically three years for joint replacements.

This hit job on oldies is indefensible economically or morally. Federal and state governments are funding public hospitals to the tune of some $450 billion over five years. The cost savings of $3 billion over four years by pulling the rug out from under older people will disappear very quickly.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul by allocating the saving to aged care doesn't wash, while being, yet another, blow to the viability of private hospitals.

Brett Heffernan is chief executive of the Australian Private Hospitals Association. Published in the Herald Sun newspaper on 27 May 2026.

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