It's bad but it could be a lot worse

WINTER ROLLS ON IN VICTORIA

The news from Victoria continues to sound grim. There were 374 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths from the virus on Tuesday.

Six Victorian prisons have gone into lockdown after a prison officer at Ravenhall Correctional Centre — who had contact with at least five prisoners who were then transferred to the other facilities — tested postive.

Infections were reported in three more aged care homes, while the existing clusters have grown to 51 cases at St Basil’s Homes for the Aged, 42 linked to Estia Health, and 31 to the Glendale Aged Care facility in Werribee.

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, however, insists there are signs the second lockdown is containing the virus, saying that, based on “the modelling of a couple of weeks ago, if we had been on an exponential curve [it] would have been thousands of cases … We’re on 374. I’m not satisfied with that, but it’s much better than 1000”.

Meanwhile, a woman has been fined $1652 for travelling to East Gippsland and visiting a series of shops (which have all now had to close) while awaiting the results of a test which, you guessed it, turned out to be positive.

Elsewhere, a security guard for the Melbourne coronavirus quarantine hotel what started all this trouble has told the ABC’s 7.30 that guards were recruited via WhatsApp, provided no training, limited sanitiser and were “told to bring their own masks”.

GETTING THE LOWE DOWN

At the annual Anika Foundation address in Sydney yesterday, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe rejected the idea that the RBA should print money to help cover governments debts.

“The reality is there is no free lunch. The tab always has to be paid and it is paid out of taxes and government revenues in one form or another,” he said.

He did, however, give the government the green light to lock in a budget deficit of more than $200 billion to support the economic recovery, and welcomed the extension of the (albeit reduced) JobKeeper and JobSeeker schemes until March.

“The biggest policy mistake to make at the moment would be to withdraw support too early,” Lowe said. “The government can play an important role here by using its balance sheet to smooth things out and reduce the severity of the downturn.”

EXTRA! EXTRA! INSURANCE IN POOR HEALTH

Consumer group Choice have savaged the performance of private health insurers during the pandemic, who saved hundreds of millions of dollars on unused extras policies like physiotherapy and elective surgeries during the lockdown.

Medibank and Bupa, Australia’s two largest funds with more than 7 million members combined, fared the worst in Choice’s report, scoring 1 out of 5. Choice cited the funds’ refusal to roll over unused extras, freeze premiums or offer blanket discounts, and the difficulty of finding their hardship policies.

Meanwhile, former Australian Medical Association secretary-general Bill Coote points out in The Australian that despite these massive savings (he puts the figure at $1 billion), insurers appear to pushing forward with increased premiums from October 1.

Further, he argues that “older people are accessing an increasing range of effective but expensive modern medical interventions. Younger people pay increasing premiums to cross-subsidise older members, creating a vicious cycle as younger people dropout”.

Of course, long time readers of Crikey will already know all this.