Page 42 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 27 November 2012
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I present to the Assembly today the Health (National Health Funding Pool and Administration) Bill 2012 (No 2), which will give effect to the funding arrangements set out in the national health reform agreement as agreed to by COAG in August 2011. The bill will establish for the ACT the national health funding pool, the administrator of that pool and a territory-managed fund for the purposes of receiving funding for ACT public hospital services.
The bill also provides for the establishment of a new entity under the Financial Management Act 1996 to be under the direction of the Director-General of the ACT Health Directorate, which will ensure appropriate accountability and transparency of funds received by the ACT local hospital network from the territory-managed fund and from the national health funding pool.
To provide the Assembly with some background, at the 13 February 2011 COAG meeting, all jurisdictions signed a heads of agreement providing for further reform of the national healthcare system. The heads of agreement modified various sections of the national health and hospitals network agreement, which was agreed to by COAG, except Western Australia, in April 2010. The heads of agreement committed the parties to finalising a national health reform agreement.
In August 2011, COAG agreed to the national health reform agreement, or the NHRA. This gives effect to the commitment made by COAG in the heads of agreement and, in doing so, the NHRA supersedes the national health and hospitals network agreement.
Under the NHRA, all states and territories will receive additional commonwealth funding for public hospitals, and no state or territory will be worse off in the short or longer term. This is because the states and territories will continue to receive at least the amount of funding they would have received under the former national healthcare arrangements. The NHRA represents a major step forward in addressing changing and growing healthcare needs, nationally and for the ACT, as well as providing substantial future increases in commonwealth funding for ACT hospitals.
The ACT Treasury estimates that the NHRA will provide the ACT with an additional $260 million in commonwealth health funding over the period 2014-15 to 2019-20. Over the longer term, the commonwealth will contribute to efficient growth funding for public hospitals, contributing 45 per cent in 2014-15, increasing to 50 per cent in 2017-18. This means that beyond 2017-18, the commonwealth will contribute 50 per cent of the cost of increases in the efficient cost of providing public hospital services and growth in demand. This will provide a substantial funding base for the ACT public hospital system into the future.
The NHRA reforms the federal financial arrangements between the commonwealth and territory governments in relation to public hospital funding. Central to these arrangements, enabling legislation needs to be developed nationally that will establish a national health funding pool through which all public hospital funding derived from the commonwealth must flow. This legislation also needs to establish an administrator of the national health funding pool.
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