Medicare is not in a funding crisis - Lieberal lies

Just how stupid do these people think we are? The new health minister Susan Ley wails that the medicare levy only pays for half of Medicare costs. She fails to say though that it's always been this way right from the start. *pffft*

The fact that the Medicare levy raises “only” $10bn of the $20bn we are spending on Medicare is another example of spin-by-numbers. It sounds bad if you don’t take into account the fact that the Medicare levy never has paid for all government spending on Medicare. The proportion it paid for in 2014 was a little lower than in 2003, but slightly higher than the previous year, as this table – prepared from a parliamentary library paper – shows. Is is entirely unclear what proportion of Medicare costs the minister thinks the levy should cover. The 55% it currently covers is not much lower than its historical average. Ley told Guardian Australia it was “clear that revenue raised from the Medicare levy, as a proportion of total spending, would not keep pace with growing cost of Medicare”. more