OVERWEIGHT Australians, smokers and the aged with private health insurance have nothing to fear from a flagged overhaul of the system, federal health minister Sussan Ley insists.
A GOVERNMENT survey, launched on Sunday, asks if higher insurance fees should be charged based on age, gender, health conditions, smoking status and other “health risk factors”.
“This is not about the sticks, it’s about the carrots,” Ms Ley told ABC radio on Monday, saying any changes to lifetime ratings would not apply to existing policy holders. The minister said she had yet to meet a person happy with their private health insurance. She cited figures showing 500,000 policies had been dumped or downgraded during the past 12 months. “What that tells me is that people are not happy with the product and they’re struggling to hold onto it,” Ms Ley said. As at June 30, 11.3 million Australians were covered by hospital treatment cover (47.4 per cent of the population) and 13.3 million had some form of general treatment cover. The government contributed $5.8 billion to the cost of private cover, by way of a 30 per cent rebate in 2014-2015. Ms Ley said results of the online survey would help the government decide “how, when and if” the system was reformed.