00:01As he tries to tighten his budget in retirement, Phil Joyce has already dropped most of his private health insurance
00:08extras and reduced his hospital cover, but he's concerned his repayments are about to go up anyway.
00:15Consecutive governments in this country have known for 30 or 40 years the baby boomers are coming to retirement. What
00:23have they done? Nothing.
00:25Over 65s get a higher rebate on their health insurance, but now the federal government wants to scrap that.
00:31It'll increase payments by hundreds of dollars a year, but the government says it'll use the savings to fund aged
00:38care.
00:38They're attacking the pensioner and it's an easy road.
00:43It's unpopular with older Australians and the health insurance industry.
00:47It's also got state governments worried that it will turn older people away from the private system to already overloaded
00:54public hospitals.
00:56We are not in a position to be having decisions which are made that are going to bring more pressure
01:01to bear on our emergency departments.
01:03And I am concerned that that could be the case here.
01:05The SA government is so concerned, it's written to the federal government.
01:09It warns the change will put pressure on a range of areas, including elective surgery wait lists and rehabilitation services.
01:17The federal health minister says under the changes, over 65s will be on the same subsidies as everyone else.
01:24The government's projecting that just 0.4% of people will drop their health insurance, a figure that's been backed
01:29up by an independent study.
01:31I'm very confident in the modelling that we have that it will be a very, very modest impact both on
01:36insurance membership but any flow on through the rest of the health system.
01:40But it's a number that state governments say they'll be keeping a close eye on.
01:46They will seem to be making a close eye on the llegar.
01:48All right.
