The National Disability Insurance Scheme, to be administered by the National Disability Insurance Agency, was introduced by the Gillard Labor Government on 1 July 2013 and, was originally allocated a funding stream of $19.3 billion over 7 years (inclusive of $7.1 billion in existing disability insurance funding) as well as the 0.5% increase in the Medicare Levy scheduled for 2014-15 onwards.
The federal and state governments share the total cost of the NDIS, with the federal government only being responsible for around half of the total cost once all the states and territories had joined the scheme. The final state joined in June 2018.
On 19 October 2017 the Australian Government Productivity Commission had stated: At full scheme, about 475 000 people with disability will receive individualised supports, at an estimated cost of $22 billion in the first year of full operation.
There has been no additional increase in the Medicare levy to fund NDIS, as shortly before the 2018–19 Budget, the Turnbull Coalition Government announced that it could ‘fully fund’ the NDIS without any increase.
That same year the Budget Papers revealed an est. $4.6 billion underspend on the NDIS – funds which then Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison credited against the national budget deficit.
In 2019-20 Budget Papers revealed another underspend of est. 3 billion and, again this underspend was used to reduce the national budget deficit.
By April 2021 the National Disability Insurance Scheme itself reported that more than 430,000 people across Australia benefiting from the NDIS and it appears that the federal government now expects that number to rise to 500,000 participants by 2023-24 - an increase of 45,000 people more than likely predominately individuals 65 years of age and older who are already falling within the remit of aged care funding.
In the 2020-21 Budget Papers the Morrison Government allocated an additional $798.8 million over four years from 2020-21 towards what appears to be a restructuring of NDIS.
Presumably so that the following can be fully implemented…...
The Guardian, 15 May 2021.
The agency that runs the national disability insurance scheme is seeking to increase the number of people that “exit” the scheme and reduce overall spending on funding packages through a “targeted review of existing participant plans”, internal documents show.
Leaked documents last month revealed the agency had set up a Sustainability Action Taskforce (SAT) with the aim of slowing spending on participant plans and growth in participant numbers.
The National Disability Insurance Agency has refused to discuss the actions of the taskforce, which Labor and the Greens have dubbed a “razor gang”. But new documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws provide further insight into its aims.
The previously reported internal talking points, labelled “strictly not for external distribution”, stated the taskforce’s three aims were to “slow net growth in participant numbers”, “slow growth in spend per participant”, and “strengthen operational discipline”.
The new documents, however, reveal the attempt to slow the growth in participant numbers will come, in part, from a focus on an “increase [in] participant exits”.
Further, slowing spending on participants’ funding packages will be achieved in part by a “targeted review of existing participant plans”, the documents state.
Other objectives include a focus on “tighter planning principles”, “tighter policies on specific reasonable and necessary supports”, “tighter price controls”, and an “increased enforcement of assurance policies”.
The unit’s aims relate to internal decisions made by the agency’s planners and are separate to a wider overhaul scheme through the controversial introduction of independent assessments, or a rewriting of the NDIS Act that determines in law what can be funded and who can receive support.
It comes as the government faces a backlash from the disability community over its warning the scheme is increasingly unsustainable.
The goal of the so-called Sustainability Action Taskforce is to stop disabled people getting on and kicking off people who are already on Jordon Steele-John
Tuesday’s budget papers showed spending on the scheme would hit $28.1bn next financial year, up from a projected $25.4bn forecast for 2021-22 in last year’s October budget.
Costs are tipped to hit $33.3bn in 2024-25, an increase from predictions in a 2017 Productivity Commission report that estimated the figure would reach $30.6bn by then.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the NDIS minister, Linda Reynolds, have used these forecasts to claim a need for “hard discussions” about the sustainability of the current funding model.
Labor’s NDIS spokesman, Bill Shorten, said the new documents were “proof positive the Morrison government has no plan for Australians with disability except slash, slash, slash”.
“It is utterly unconscionable that vulnerable people are trying in good faith to get on the NDIS completely unaware there is a secret plan not to let them in,” he said…..
Read the full article here.
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