When you enter a public hospital, you are likely to be asked if you have private health insurance, and if you want to use it. This is what you need to consider.
Subsidies for private health insurance premiums cost the government over A$6 billion a year. Is it time to scrap the rebate and redirect these funds elsewhere in the health system?
Fron Jackson-Webb, The Conversation; Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation y Benjamin Silvester, The Conversation
Private health insurance premiums are set to rise again. These 14 charts (well, technically 10 charts and four tables) look at some of the reasons why health insurance premiums keep going up and up.
We are paying more for our health insurance because we are using it more. No crude, short-term measures to restrict premium growth will deal with this fact.
Private health insurance is meant to take pressure off the public system. But with exclusionary policies, people are increasingly avoiding the levies and using the public system anyway.
Recently announced changes to private health insurance reinforce the primacy of hospitals for mental health issues. This is despite many inquiries recommending better community mental-health care.
Whether a 10% discount is enough to increase health insurance take-up by young people, many of whom are in precarious employment arrangements or unemployed, is a question for the marketeers.
Private patients who stay in hospital for costly rehab after major knee surgery recover just as fast as people who go home and have physiotherapy. So, why pay more?
The AMA are pushing for simplified insurance packages that would see gold, silver and bronze products offered. This won’t solve the overall problem with private health insurance.
Leaked documents of a secret ‘taskforce’ to reform public hospital funding reveal some controversial proposals. So how are hospitals funded and why might this need changing?
The 30% subsidy for private health insurance was predicted to be a bad and costly policy many years ago. And 20 years later, the only thing that’s changed is the $6 billion-plus hole in the budget.
Health is always a key factor in deciding which way to vote. So what have the major parties promised in health? And what could these changes mean for consumers?
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne