Health policy analyst and consultant Jennifer Doggett, who is also editor of the health website Croakey, said addressing the inefficiencies in private health insurance identified by Grattan would require fundamental changes to the current system. But if they want the industry to survive, then it ought to survive on its own feet.” “Even though many of those are forced into it through the tax arrangements, I can’t see either major political party adopting a policy against private health insurance. “It’s 40% of the population who have private health insurance,” he said. “There needs to be a plan, and the government has to get the industry together and knock their heads together and actually try and change this,” Duckett said.Īsked if the private health industry deserved to be salvaged and if money would be better invested in a stronger Medicare as has been proposed by some policy analysts, Duckett said: “I just don’t think that’s politically feasible.”
Insurers that won’t or can’t offer their customers value for money should not be allowed to raise their premiums, Grattan says. As a result, premium increases are too great and too frequent. The report also says that out-of-pocket costs should be lower, and that private insurers pay too much for prostheses, because the way they are priced is opaque and not subject to competitive forces. This is not sustainable.”įor the industry to be salvaged, private hospital costs should be lower, and would be if private hospitals were as efficient as public hospitals, the report says. “Too often, one sector of the industry blames another for their woes, and enlists government help to try to shift costs. “Government has been too willing to accept this burden,” the report authors, health economist Prof Stephen Duckett and Grattan senior associate Greg Moran wrote. The report said the industry asking the federal government for support could not continue. “But the industry’s underlying problems have not gone away. “The private health industry – private health insurers, private hospitals, device importers and manufacturers, and private specialists – has weathered the Covid storm,” the Grattan report, published on Wednesday night, says.
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