Isn’t it worth it to save $70 million over four years?
The cost of doing the audits is $76.9 million (that’s about $9600 per audit). When you take the cost from the anticipated recoveries the so-called saving works out at $17.5 million a year. This puts the price of confidentiality of your private health record at about 80 cents per Australian per year. We are giving away the right to privacy of every patient record for a very low saving of about 80 cents per Australian per year. And there are no guarantees the scheme will save anything. When the Senate asked for the assumptions under which the savings estimates were made, none were provided. The estimates are a guess based largely around the projected deterrent effect.
