Seniors to lose their health card

Senator Ron Boswell has attacked the lack of action from the Rudd Government on aged pensions, as  part of a pattern of disrespect for senior Australians.

He has cited the fact that 22,000 will lose their Senior Health Care Cards from July 09.

“The Government is going to slug 22,000 older Australians by taking away their Senior Health Care Cards in order to save $20 million – in the face of a $22bn surplus and rising living costs.”

“In answer to my Question Without Notice in the Senate today, the Minister, Senator Evans, could only explain this as a result of targeting benefits to those most in need.

“In fact, the Government is targeting older Australians full stop.  Twenty two thousand senior citizens will no longer get the Health Card Card benefits of a $500 concession allowance, discounts on pharmaceuticals, telephone allowance and access to bulkbilled Medicare services.”

Senator Boswell said that the cuts to aged benefits were a result of the Government’s changes to the definition of the adjusted taxable income test in the budget papers.

“We were advised in Estimates that –

“There are two components. One is adding back in amounts that are salary sacrificed to superannuation, and the other component is adding back in gross super amounts that are withdrawn from a tax fund. If you lose access to the card you lose eligibility to its associated benefits. If your income exceeds the limits and you are no longer a Commonwealth senior health care holder, you no longer have access to seniors’ concession allowance, telephone allowance or to pharmaceutical items at a concessional rate.” [Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration, Ms Lindenmayer, 20/6/08].

“The Minister, Ms Macklin, told the House: On the issue of the net savings from gross income and salary sacrificing with regard to the Commonwealth seniors health card, we expect the net savings to be $20 million.” [Hansard 5/6/08].

“In other June Estimates, we were also told that the income test for residential aged carers would be affected by the new income test” [4/6/08, Economics Standing Committee].

“The Rudd Government does not care about the aged in our community. The Rudd Government sees pensioners, self funded retirees and carers for the aged, as targets for fleecing, not rewarding.”