Half-a-million downgrade their private health insurance cover

The findings coincide with the federal government on 8 Novber launching a national public consultation that will ask consumers their views on private health insurance and how they think it can deliver better value for money for patients.
The official 2014-15 results from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority follow the federal opposition’s successive cuts to the value of the private health insurance rebate in their 2012-13 and 2013-14 budgets – including means-testing and restricting indexation to CPI, not prium growth.
In response, hundreds of thousands prepaid their policies for up to three years in 2012 just before the first of the opposition’s cuts (when in government) came into effect in order to delay their impact.
Ms Ley said any changes needed to be delivered with the starting point that the Medicare and public hospital systs rained “universally” accessible to all Australians and private health was seen as complent – not a substitute – to services.
“It’s important we’re able to ask consumers what they expect from their private health insurance and there’s plenty of room to do that without moving towards United States or United Kingdom models that exclude sick people and make it only available to the rich, which we don’t support”.
Ms Ley said it was necessary to look beyond just the private health insurance rebate for answers and the government would also hold consultations with insurers, hospitals and doctors to discuss structural reform to the syst that would encourage better value for consumers.
“It’s also important any reforms complent a variety of integrated policy work we’re currently undertaking, including our plans to build a healthier Medicare and mental health syst, as well as the federation and tax white papers.”
The APRA figures show that the number of non-exclusionary – also known as ‘all inclusive’ – private health insurance policies with hospital cover fell by 500,471 to 3.5 million in 2014-15.
In contrast, there was a 558,619 increase in the number of health policies with hospital cover that exclude certain medical services and also require patients pay an excess and co-payment (gap).
The percentage of population with hospital cover also flat-lined in 2014-15 at 47 per cent, ruling out an increase in private health insurance take up as the reason the dramatic growth in exclusionary policies.
Consultation will run for four weeks from Sunday 7 Novber until Friday 4 Decber 2015.