DEFEND AND EXTEND MEDICARE
When our movement made history and turned Melbourne Green in 2010, we got dental into Medicare for 3.4 million kids. It's time to finish the job and get dental health and mental health care into Medicare for everyone.
The pandemic has revealed how important a properly funded health care system is.
Healthcare is getting more and more expensive, and too many people can’t afford to access dental or mental health care.
We must protect and extend Medicare by bringing dental and mental health under our universal public insurance system. Your access to mental health isn’t determined by your wealth.
Every day the billionaires and the big corporations are looking for ways to profit from the health threats we face. Melburnians must have access to the critical health services they need, without having to worry about how to pay for it. It is critical that we don’t continue down the American path.
Liberal and Labor undermined the public health system, by pushing people into the private health insurance industry, run for profit, not people. The public pays $7 billion to the Private Health Insurance industry each year - making care cheaper for the rich, while people who can’t afford private health insurance face long waiting lists.
The Greens want to wind back handouts to the billionaires and big corporations and use the money for all of us, funding health reforms like bringing dental into Medicare.
Adam and the Greens will:
- Provide Medicare-funded free dental care to all, accessible through your Medicare card so everyone can visit the dentist when they need to
- Invest $4.8 billion to ensure mental healthcare is fully covered under Medicare by providing unlimited sessions with a psychologist or psychiatrist with no out of pocket fees so everyone can get the support they need, when they need it, at every stage of their mental health journey
- Reinvest $7 billion of the private health insurance rebate into the public system, slashing out of pocket costs
- Treat drug use like a health issue, not a criminal one
- Legalise, tax and regulate cannabis to turn people away from the black market, because prohibition causes more harm than good