Health insurance premiums higher under Coalition
Nicola Roxon
posted Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Those with private health insurance would suffer under a Coalition Government that would allow their premiums to rise unchecked.
Tony Abbott must overrule his Shadow Treasurer and commit to continuing government oversight of health insurance premium increases.
Yesterday, Joe Hockey said an Abbott Government would allow health insurance companies to raise premiums with no government oversight.
This would free up health insurance companies to raise their premiums as high as possible with nobody standing in their way.
“The problem with the market is that ultimately premium increases are the decision of a Minister, so it’s not a pure market.”...Joe Hockey, National Press Club, 16 February 2010
Every year, health insurance companies submit their premium increases to the Minister, who must sign off on them.
In recent years, this process has seen companies ask for higher premium increases than were ultimately granted to them by the Minister.
If I had simply ‘ticked and flicked’ the health fund requests for increases the way Mr Abbott did, then health insurance premiums would have gone up an extra 0.27% in 2008 and 0.41% in 2009.
In contrast to Mr Abbott’s approach, this Government is doing everything it can to restrict premium increases to the minimum necessary to meet legal requirements, such as maintaining the solvency of insurers, with advice from the Private Health Insurance regular PHIAC.
The Rudd Government is also improving the system by giving consumers more information about than ever before by providing a breakdown of the individual fee increases by Private Health Insurers.
Under Mr Hockey’s plan the Minister would have no say, and health insurance companies would have free reign to gouge consumers for as much as they liked.
Mr Abbott must overrule Mr Hockey and guarantee government oversight of health insurance premium increases.