The Irony Party of Australia
Encephalatronicalogical Pamphlet
30th December 2005
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Funds Flag Rise in Price of Fuck-all
After Australian private health funds today unveiled their proposal for a 5% to 7% increase in the cost of private health insurance premiums the Federal Government promised the new deal would be 'heavily scrutinised' before it is approved with a small face-saving reduction in the New Year. If the proposal is approved a fifth consecutive annual increase to health fund members costs at double the rate of inflation will be introduced in April 2006.
While the Australian public flocked to the heavily-promoted schemes several years ago at the time of their introduction, the numbers of people signing on for private health care have since plateaued.
Saccharine spokesmouths for the health funds warn a rash of pragmatism among Australians has seen health funds used by consumers in a way that sometimes compromises the profits of private health insurance corporations and forces increased costs for members. Where it is clearly ideal in terms of corporate returns that exclusively fit and healthy people join health funds, it was always anticipated that a broad cross-section of the population would take advantage of private insurance. But the public has instead cheated the private health care system. Those who are more likely to need health care services - the elderly and infirm - have created a dangerous imbalance in the private health sector by signing on in greater numbers and for more substantial coverage than others. Meanwhile those who are healthy and unlikely to require expensive medical procedures have taken a self-serving and unco-operative attitude, staying away from expensive private health funds in an obstinate show of rude good health.
As a result the large corporations that run health insurance in Australia have had little option but to massively escalate costs, draw more heavily on the public purse in the form of the 30% subsidy paid by the Government to private health funds, and at the same time impose large additional or 'gap' payments on those requiring medical treatment.
This last impost has steadily increased in recent years and now averages $720 per hospital procedure. While this may seem absurd, and contrary to the intention, application or concept of health insurance, it must be remembered the large 'gap' payments are the result of the manipulation of the health system by a recalcitrant public.
Due to this consumer intransigence, community minded corporations struggling to bring improved health services to all solvent Australians are placed in an invidious position, criticised on all sides by a bitter nation unwilling to properly fund the private health care system single-handedly preserving the viability of inefficient public health.
Obviously, this is not a time to refer to the profits, executive incentive schemes and shareholder returns of health insurance funds. The mention of profits, or of shareholder returns, or of executive incentive schemes, in the context of an increase in a taxpayer-subsidised premium, is inappropriate. Best reserved for the reporting season, for the AGM.
The appropriate discussion to be had annually in the context of private health care premiums is a sensible discussion of the high cost of health care, and of the need for incentives to bring those recalcitrant and self-interested young and healthy people into private schemes.
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