The Wire

With health care costs in Australia on the rise, the debate is on about how we are going to manage those costs as our population ages. Now one health economist says we would save significant amounts of money by scrapping the private health care rebate and putting the money into the public system.

Terence Cheng is a health economist at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. He has done the maths and says the Opposition’s stance that we can relieve pressure on the public hospital system by pushing people into the private system doesn’t add up.