Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to bring to the attention of the House a matter of concern regarding the announcement of increases to fees charged by private health funds. On 6 March this year, the Minister for Health and Ageing put out a media release entitled ‘Private health insurance premiums rise by 4.99%’, and that is what the public heard when she went on radio and television spruiking her victory.

Today I got an email from a constituent in Tahmoor. It reads:

The Government gave permission for a rise of under 5% for the Health Insurance companies to apply from April.

Several of us have received advices of the new charges from Medicare Private for our cover and the rise is in the region of 9%!!!!

Is the government policing this matter as obviously the increases are far above those specified by Mr Rudd and his cabinet.

Does the minister for health know? Did she tell the Prime Minister?

Another constituent of mine went in to Medibank Private last week to pay her monthly fees and to make a claim but instead got a double whammy. Her premium had not risen by the $4.50 she expected but by $10.00, which was a whopping 8.1 per cent rise—as worked out by her customer service person. When my constituent asked the reason for the size of the rise in fees, Medibank told her it was because people on her level of cover made a lot of claims. They also said that, if she was on a level of cover where people made fewer claims, the rise would be less.

The heavily promoted 4.99 per cent increase is only an average taken across all the products offered by a health insurance provider. The range of increases is another matter entirely, it seems—so much so that Medibank Private will not publish the range, although their increases are as high as 8.9 per cent, and I am sure the other private health insurers are the same. The minister for health publicly crowed about keeping increases low. In fact, they are only lower in the levels of cover where people either do not claim or cannot claim. The rest of us will pay a lot more than the minister for health said.

Not only did my constituent get hit with an increase double what the minister told her it would be; the items covered by her insurer were cut. My constituent has had a double mastectomy. In spite of being a pensioner, she has to pay for private health cover because there are no public health facilities in rural areas where she could receive the regular therapies she needs. So, with very little money, she has to pay for private health insurance.

My constituent knows and double-checks exactly what her cover entitles her to claim. She is covered for up to $500 worth of prostheses and prosthetic appliances per year. A pair of prostheses costs $715, and, because my constituent needs the pair, she claims $500 and pays the other $215 every second year. To successfully wear the prostheses she needs a special bra. When these bras are purchased from a specialist retailer and receipted as prosthetic appliances she has been able to claim 85 per cent of their cost. My constituent needs regular physiotherapy and hydrotherapy to address muscle wastage, back pain and other issues. As a consequence, she needs to wear a special swimsuit designed to take the prostheses. When it is purchased from a specialist retailer and described as a prosthetic appliance she has been able to claim 85 per cent of the cost. Every alternate year she buys specialised bras and swimsuits and claims them—but not this time. The Medibank customer service person told her that the specialised bras and swimsuits were no longer claimable. So her fees went up by more than double what the minister for health said, and Medibank Private cut the items for which she could claim.

When I contacted Medibank Private health insurance last Friday, they said they would return my call before close of business. They did call me today—Tuesday. They said their average rate of rise was only 4.64 per cent across all of their products. They said Medibank had never covered the bras or swimsuits under that particular level of cover. Medibank’s media manager then went on to say that once in 2006 a claim for the items had been paid because the call centre had given my constituent wrong information and she had bought the items on that advice. The payment was ex gratia and was a one-off payment only.

I then went back to my constituent, who searched through her papers and came up with receipts, Medibank customer information statements and the like. Tomorrow I will have them to hand. But tonight I can say that the minister for health and Medibank Private appear to have been economical with the truth, in that they have not told all and have put a particular spin on what they have said.