PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (11:47): I'm really pleased to second this important motion. Every year, Australians with private health insurance feel like they pay more and get less. This year, Australia's average premium rise of 4.4 per cent was the highest in nearly a decade.

The five biggest funds raised gold-tier premiums by an average of more than 13 per cent. Out-of-pocket costs keep climbing. The average gap for hospital treatment is now $513, which is up from $437 just two years ago.

The share of hospital premiums that were returned as hospital treatment benefits was only 84.2 per cent in 2024-25. Insurer profits, though, rose by nearly 50 per cent in the six years to June 2025 while industry modelling projects that premiums will grow by 17 per cent to 2030 against inflation of only 11 per cent. Meanwhile, many Australians are making the very difficult decision to drop or downgrade their private health cover.

In 2020, four in 10 hospital policies were gold. Today, it's barely one in four. Gold tier is the only tier that's legally required to cover cataract surgery, joint replacements and dialysis.

Older Australians dropping their cover from gold to silver tier may lose exactly those parts of the cover that they are most likely to need. In my submission to the economic roundtable last year, I said to the Treasurer that private health insurance has to deliver a public benefit, real access to care and real value for money. But, instead of investing in whole-of-system reforms, the government is undermining value for money by cutting the private health insurance rebate for over-65s.

Let's remember that, in 2023, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing published independent advice which showed that the over-65s rebate represents the highest value for money for governments, hospitals and insured people. Until I obtained independent analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office, the government failed to concede that half of the $3 billion it claims will be saved by this measure will be clawed out of the pockets of pensioners.

The government has not been transparent about how many Australians will have to downgrade cover that they no longer can afford or the cost of that to our already overburdened public hospitals, nor does it have a plan to monitor or counter the predictable adverse outcomes of this legislation. Even after these proposed changes, the government will still be supporting the private health system by more than $7.6 billion a year, not counting revenue forgone through the Medicare levy surcharge.

The private health insurance rebate has cost this country over a hundred billion dollars since its introduction, but in 27 years its value for money has never been formally assessed. The impact of the rebate is contested. No single body has oversight of our private health care system.

Its rebates, its premiums, its product design, hospital viability—no single body has oversight about whether those parts of the system are working for patients and providing value for money. Regulation of private healthcare and private health insurance is too fragmented across the department, Ahpra and other agencies. No single body currently tracks whether the public's contribution is passed through to patients as benefits or whether it's absorbed in insurers' margins and management expenses.

That's why I stand today with the member for Clarke in calling on the government to establish an independent, statutory private health system authority within the health portfolio to monitor the sector's sustainability, ensure fair contracting, guard against managed care and give the government frank, independent advice on the levers that would lift coverage and restore value to our private health insurance system—in short, to ensure that insurance products and services prioritise consumers over shareholders.

We can't make rational, evidence based and fair decisions about our private health system while spending remains opaque and benefits decrease. We have to protect Australia's choice and quality and the value of the health care that they receive. We need to avoid another 80 private hospitals closing over the next five years and the downstream impact of those sorts of closures on service provision.

Australians who pay for private health cover deserve to know that it will be there when they need it. So I commend this motion to the House.