Former govt adviser calls for health fund reform

According to a report by The Australian Financial Review, Professor Grae Samuel, who was an adviser to the government’s private health insurance review up until a few months ago, is pushing for a new way of calculating health insurance priums that could limit increases to 2.5 per cent a year.He has also called for a government-run website to help consumers compare the thousands of health policies on the market and for wholesale deregulation of government-dictated rebates for medical implants or “prostheses”.In a speech delivered last week at the Actuaries Institute’s sinar on health reform, Prof Samuel argued the best way to impose competitive discipline on the healthcare market was by “powering consumers to make informed decisions”.This would require the funds to release all the data they have on price, quality, performance, length of stay, mortality and readmission rates of individual hospitals, surgeons and practitioners, if necessary with the authorisation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.Prof Samuel added that the complexity and opacity of health insurance made it impossible for most consumers to make an informed choice, and that big health funds would need to lead the push for change or face “disaster” as more mbers downgrade or quit their policies.