Senior health expert Dr Nick Coatsworth has warned Australians are losing confidence in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, as its costs continue to rise.
NDIS spending is now one of the fastest-growing areas of Commonwealth expenditure, reaching about $50 billion a year, second only to interest on government debt.
Coatsworth said growing concern within the community is linked to the impact of the scheme on other essential services.
“It’s been widely reported that some Labor politicians are concerned that the NDIS might be losing its social licence,” he said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
“But I would go further than that. I would say that many people have lost faith in the NDIS.”
While he said Australians should be proud of the scheme, he raised concerns about how it operates alongside the broader health system.
“The generous funding of the NDIS is taking staff away from health and aged care, would be the most obvious reason,” he said.
“But that’s not the only reason why it’s not working together. NDIS spending now is more than Medicare. It’s more than aged care.
“I do think that the Australian community looks at that and goes, ‘That doesn’t seem like it’s an appropriate distribution of funding.’
“I think that’s where people are starting to get more broadly frustrated in the community.”
Speaking at the Australian Financial Review Healthcare Summit, Coatsworth pointed to what he described as an imbalance in government spending.
“The top five things that the Australian budget funds: health, aged care, defence, NDIS and the interest payments,” he said.
“One of those benefits 800,000 people, and the rest of them are for 26 million.”
He also shared his family’s experience navigating the health system after his mother was diagnosed with dementia.
“I left her crying this morning. Sixty-five per cent of her funding came through – that’s only 3.5 hours. We’ve waited six months for that funding,” he said.
“We have to address the elephant in the room. When are we going to transfer some of that NDIS funding into people who have paid taxes all their lives and are stuck now in (our) public hospitals?”
Coatsworth said his comments had resonated with many in the community.
“Those personal comments I made about my mother and aged care did generate a heck of a lot of social media engagement. It struck a chord,” he said.
“I think that’s a good indicator of how people are viewing this, especially people in the health and aged care sectors.
“The day after that went on social media, I had people coming up to me in the hospital saying, ‘Thanks for saying it. We see it, we feel afraid to say anything about it, because it’s considered a sacred cow.’
“But, I think there’s lots and lots of people out there in the community who are pretty concerned.”
He also questioned whether the current growth target for the scheme is appropriate, with some arguing an eight per cent increase is too high.
Both state and federal governments are working to reduce that growth rate to around five to six per cent.
Health Minister Mark Butler said options to curb spending are being considered ahead of the federal budget on May 12.
“The scheme is off track. It lacks those disciplined design features of a good social program, and we’re determined to get it back on track,” he said.
“You can have fewer people on the scheme; you can have relatively the same number of people on the scheme with lower cost growth.
“And I think our job now is to work through all of those different permutations and assess the pros and cons of each of them.”
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