Costs are about 14% higher in private hospitals, Chris. That’s why the spare capacity isn’t taken up. They’re less efficient

Well yes - they can’t get enough people to work for them at the wages and conditions they’re offering (especially nurses).

And I’m not sure where you get governments being “unwilling” to shorten the queues. It’s a lot more complex than it appears. Rudd’s recognition that even 2 billion mightn’t fix it and we might have to have a big rethink is evidence of that.

Well there is spare capacity. Its not a problem of having to build up infrastructure by enlarging hospitals and training doctors/nurses which takes time a long time. The capacity is available in the private system or with some types of staff just deciding not to work. The government is just unwilling to pay for it.

The private system clearly has spare capacity. If the government wanted to, they could pay for public patients to be treated in private hospitals (as was partially suggested by the medicare gold proposal).

Costs are about 14% higher in private hospitals, Chris. That’s why the spare capacity isn’t taken up. They’re less efficient.

And I’m not sure where you get governments being “unwilling” to shorten the queues. It’s a lot more complex than it appears. Rudd’s recognition that even 2 billion mightn’t fix it and we might have to have a big rethink is evidence of that.

I cannot understand why private health funds are not just billed for any services, provided to their members, who end up within the public health system.

Well I think that fundamentally there is a big con going on by governments - current and previous. That the private system exists and has short or no queues for procedures demonstrates that the shortage of infrastructure (doctors or hospital beds) is not nearly as bad as described. The private system clearly has spare capacity. If the government wanted to, they could pay for public patients to be treated in private hospitals (as was partially suggested by the medicare gold proposal).

Governments are just unwilling (perhaps believing its economically the wrong decision) to pay to shorten the queues because they want to spend the money in other areas. In a way, by having long waiting lists, they get people who can afford it, to partially fund their own treatment (be it through private insurance or self-insurance) rather than having 100% of it paid by the government. A warped kind of means test!

The punters who opt out, after the recent changes, are the most likely to head to public hospitals, whatever the case. Anything vaguely serious would surely bring out their immediate fears of forking out ‘gap money’, for instance.

I cannot understand why private health funds are not just billed for any services, provided to their members, who end up within the public health system.

The average increase in private health insurance premiums over the same period is less than this. If memory serves me correctly it’s been between 4 & 7% for the same period.

Pushing the bias a little more toward public health will put downwards pressure on costs, the mechanism being a little less free money begging to be spent.

There’s already a lot of pressure on the public health system - I really don’t see how the private health system is causing per-patient/procedure costs in the public system to go up. I think its more to do with people expecting a higher level of care - new and better treatments become available which are very expensive. Fixing the patent system would probably go a long way to reducing health costs and signing the free trade agreement certainly didn’t help.

The fact that private insurance health premiums are rising much faster than CPI is no surprise - health costs in general are doing the same

Sure they did, as soon as the J-Ho mob decided they were going to subsidise private health insurance, our health system suddenly caught US health system disease (i.e. spiralling costs). It’s no coincidence. Pushing the bias a little more toward public health will put downwards pressure on costs, the mechanism being a little less free money begging to be spent.

Chris (a different one) ,they are just playing politics as usual. Rosanna Capolingua is likely to follow Nelson and stand for the Liberals in the future. It was pretty clear which party she personally supported in the lead up to the election. These mobs just can’t get it through their heads that their preferred income support provider has been given the sack. It is as plain as that.

They’ve been going up that much, per year, anyway give or take a few points. MBF’s rise last year was the straw that broke our particular back and I’d doubt very much we were alone in dropping cover last year.

What would be interesting to find out is if the proportion of money that funds return to members in services compared to the amount that they receive in premiums is changing. I’ve heard numbers of around 80-90% return rates, but I don’t know if that has changed much over the last few years.

The fact that private insurance health premiums are rising much faster than CPI is no surprise - health costs in general are doing the same, and the public health system needs just as much an increase in funding if it is going to keep up (and they have been getting greater than CPI funding increases).

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Chris, I don’t know. Possibly they believe their own propaganda, but obviously the “partial cover” designed as a tax dodge would no longer have a rationale, so maybe it’s that which would lose them bucks. I suppose also “not that price sensitive” means “to a degree price sensitive”.

In addition, this whole thing shines a spotlight on what people exactly do get by paying for private cover, and it may not be in their interest to have people thinking about that.

They’ve been going up that much, per year, anyway give or take a few points. MBF’s rise last year was the straw that broke our particular back and I’d doubt very much we were alone in dropping cover last year.

I wonder if they deregulated the system more (eg let health funds charge older or sick people as much as they want or younger healthier people less, perhaps rewarding those who have stuck with them for a long time with continued cheaper insurance if they want to) and removed all the subsidies (30% rebate) whether we’d see a more sustainable system. Or we’d just see it die out (and everyone has the public health system).

There are no age-based restrictions on premium levels in New Zealand. Old people (like my Mum) slowly pare back what their private insurance will cover in order to keep the premium from rising too fast.

So the health insurance policies which will be deserted in droves are ones which were designed specifically to minimise tax and don’t really cover the customer for real medical procedures? In that case bring it on, I reckon.

Is that the reason behind those ridiculous ads where an ambulance speeds to a semi-conscious guy lying on a nature strip - and then a Chinese doctor jumps out and proceeds to give him acupuncture and a massage?

If thats true then how reliable is the treasury modelling of 400,000 people dropping health insurance?

Exactly.

Since it’s been “released”, I went looking for it - could find nothing at Treasury, or at Swan’s or Roxon’s websites. But I strongly suspect it’s based on the same pretty crude behavioural assumptions that the other studies are. It seems to me axiomatic that if a product is being sold which only has any real relevance because it allows one to avoid paying more tax, and the tax stick disappears… We don’t even get basic figures that might inform us in this “debate” - for instance, the number of people who are in the relevant brackets but only have partial hospital cover - let alone any actual research into what people’s decision making is swayed by.