One Nation’s health policies based on misconceptions and may cost the taxpayer, experts warn

Medical experts have blasted One Nation’s health policies, saying they do not make sense, are based on misconceptions and could cost taxpayers more money while leaving vulnerable Australians without access to care.

The party has promised to withdraw Australia from the World Health Organization and to scrap regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration, rolling its “essential functions” into the health department. It has also proposed adding photo ID to Medicare cards.

The Grattan Institute health program director, Peter Breadon, said some of the policies look like mistakes.

Breadon pointed out that the TGA was already part of the health department.

“Targeting an agency that is majority funded through cost recovery [fees and charges to pharmaceuticals], not through taxpayer funding, also doesn’t make a lot of sense. So that really doesn’t stand up to even a very small amount of scrutiny,” he said.

“It just looks to me like an error.”

One Nation’s website claims up to $3bn is lost annually due to “fraudulent claims and misuse of Medicare, money that should be used to improve healthcare affordability”.

But Breadon said the data the party cites – from the 2023 Independent Review of Medicare Integrity and Compliance – shows the $3bn rort was in relation to provider non-compliance, not fraud by the public.

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“They’re talking about an estimate of savings that has nothing to do with their proposal, and there’s not much evidence that consumer fraud for Medicare cards is a meaningful cost to government,” Breadon said.

“And if we did implement this policy of putting photo IDs on that, that does impose a lot of costs.”

Hanson has previously attempted to add photo ID to Medicare cards, and introduced a private member’s bill in the Senate in 2019. The bill ultimately lapsed at the end of the parliamentary term in 2022.

The party has also pledged a royal commission on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic, opposes vaccine mandates, and wants to “review” $3bn in medications approved for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme during the pandemic.

Hanson has long been an objector to the Covid-19 vaccine, refused to get it during the pandemic, and twice tried to introduce legislation to stop the “discrimination” against Australians who also refused to get the jab.