New data today from the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare has confirmed that record wait times for health care continue to soar under this Government.

Greg Hunt claims hospitals as being one of his four pillars of health, but the reality is Australians have never waited longer to visit the hospital.

While there was an increase of 4.2 per cent Emergency Department presentations in 2018/19 from 2017/18, todays data shows that this Government isnt giving Australians a fair chance of seeking medical treatment.

The facts, confirmed by the AIHW today are:

• 50 per cent of patients waited at least 41 days for elective surgeries.
• 890,000 patients were added to public hospital elective surgery waiting lists during 2018-19, while only 760,000 patients were admitted for their surgery in the same period.
• The number of patients seen on time has fallen since the Liberals came to office.
• Fewer Emergency Departments visits are completed in 4 hours.

In the Australian Medical Associations response to this data, they have criticised the Governments inaction when it comes to hospitals.

When governments underfund and create inadequate hospital capacity, they are making a choice to constrain the supply of public hospital services. People will wait longer. While they wait longer, they get sicker. There are more patient complications and even an increased number of deaths.

Labor created Medicare and will always fight to defend and improve universal access to health care.

And Labor will always fight against Liberal Governments who try and determine your access to health care based on your credit card.

Greg Hunt and the Coalition need to address this health care crisis unfolding on their watch, because under this Government out of pocket costs and waiting lists have never been higher.