Beattie calls for means-testing

FORMER Queensland premier Peter Beattie says health system reform requires scrapping universal cover and introducing means-testing.

FORMER Queensland premier Peter Beattie says health system reform requires scrapping universal cover and introducing means-testing to discourage the well-off from using public hospitals.

Mr Beattie, a former state health minister whose Labor government faced an electoral rout in 2005 as systemic shortcomings were exposed by independent inquiries into the health system, insists this radical prescription, which he promoted while in office, would have prevented healthcare becoming unsustainable and unaffordable. He said yesterday the reforms he was stopped from introducing five years ago could have become a national model.

After the unveiling of Kevin Rudd's health reform plan, Mr Beattie, now Queensland's Trade Commissioner in Los Angeles, said: "I don't want to get involved in a contemporary political debate but my view about what I wanted to do back then hasn't changed.

"We knew at the time that it was a politically dangerous reform but we were already taking so much political pain that I decided it was worth it to try to fix the health system. I also believed people would understand the necessity and back it. If I decide to be privately insured and I can afford it, why shouldn't I make a co-payment for care in the public system?"

In 2005, a public inquiry, run by Tony Morris QC and retired Court of Appeal judge Geoff Davies QC, and an inquiry by public sector expert Peter Forster warned that public health systems would be unsustainable without radical funding reform.

The Australian Medical Association's then Queensland president Steve Hambleton said: "There's no doubt the public already understands that universal free healthcare providing everything for everybody is unsustainable".

Mr Beattie was forced to drop his plan after warnings the Howard government would financially penalise Queensland.