AMA says private health insurers’ management expenses and profits are ‘key drivers of premium increases’
The Australian Medical Association has released new analysis showing skyrocketing management expenses for private health insurers, and said patients are being hit with rising bills as a result.
The analysis shows management expenses for private health insurers rose 32% over the last four years to June 2023 – an increase of $716m.
While patients pay more for their cover, the AMA data shows health insurers have recorded a 50.2% increase in profits over the same four-year period.
By contrast, the amount insurers paid out in medical services and hospital treatment benefits increased by just 3.6% and 8.1% respectively.
AMA president Stephen Robson at the National Press Club last year. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
AMA president Professor Stephen Robson said:
When patients pay their insurance premiums, they expect that money is going mostly towards the costs of benefits for treatment and hospital stays, but what this graph shows is that management expenses and insurance profits are key drivers of premium increases.
Private health is a major part of Australia’s world-leading health system, and we understand the need for insurers to be profitable, but these numbers show something has gone very wrong and that significant reform is needed.
The AMA is urging the federal government to mandate private health insurers return a minimum 90%, on average, of premium dollars paid each year back to the consumer in the form of rebates and benefits.
Young Labor Left NSW expresses grave concerns over the proposed amendments to the Migration Act and opposes its passage into law. These measures would only serve to further criminalise refugees and asylum seekers within this country and see these people in indefinite detention and/or at the whims of the persecution that they sought to flee from ...
The youth of this party refuse to co-sign on this government’s attempt to ram through sweeping powers to punish potentially hundreds of refugees and non-citizens.
The submission notes that it is not a “reasonable excuse” to the new offence of failing to cooperate in deportation that a person “has a genuine fear of suffering persecution or significant harm”. This amounts to “an intentional and concerted effort to target asylum seekers and threaten them with imprisonment if they do not comply with removal even if they have well-founded concerns for the lives of themselves and their families”, it said.
It said in the case of ASF17 – the man challenging detention in the high court – “this amendment will extend immigration detention indefinitely”, which it said was “inhumane”.
The submission said the bill is a “direct breach of the ALP national platform”, citing the mandatory minimum of one year in prison.
It concluded:
The bill represents a gross, miscalculated and cruel attempt to fix an issue within the refugee system that will only exacerbate said issue. It cannot be, in good conscience, allowed to pass into law.
And to think in Anthony Albanese and Andrew Giles there is a Labor left prime minister and immigration minister, so this heat comes from their own faction.
Anthony Albanese listens to Andrew Giles during Question Time. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Students Against Placement Poverty to protest outside Sydney parliament offices
Students and workers are gathering outside Sydney’s parliament offices this afternoon demanding the federal government front the bill to end placement poverty.
Grassroots group Students Against Placement Poverty has lobbied for years that mandatory unpaid placements, usually spanning hundreds of hours, should be compensated.
Earlier this year, the Universities Accord final report backed their recommendations, suggesting students completing placements in care courses like nursing and teaching should receive a commonwealth stipend.
Australian Services Union (ASU) NSW and ACT secretary Angus McFarland said students who were willing to join essential workforces were struggling to make ends meet and dropping out entirely.
Australian Services Union NSW and ACT secretary Angus McFarland. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Social work student Isaac Wattenberg said the cost of living was “sky-high”.
It’s unaffordable and unsustainable for my peers and I to take months off paid work to complete mandatory unpaid placements. Students will no longer accept being exploited.
Australia Post says new letter delivery model to be rolled out by end of 2025
Just circling back to some earlier news via AAP, that letters will be delivered every second day instead of every day for 98% of locations across Australia from Monday (see earlier post).
Australian Post said the new delivery model will be rolled out nationally by the end of 2025, with posties delivering priority mail, express letters and parcels every day, and standard letters and unaddressed mail every second day.
CEO Paul Graham said:
The regulations governing Australia Post had previously required us to focus on everyday letter delivery, even when there were no letters to deliver.
This has been contributing to significant financial losses for Australia Post.
This is an important first step for Australia Post to address those financial losses by focusing its services on the growing parcel delivery business.
Australia Post group CEO and managing director Paul Graham. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Save the Children Australia urges more humanitarian funding
The CEO of Save the Children Australia says support from the federal government for humanitarian emergencies is “too low overall”.
Speaking on ABC News Breakfast just earlier, Mat Tinkler said the Australian government had contributed around $42m to Gaza, which is a “significant contribution”. But he argued more funding is needed as the threat of famine grows:
The amount of funding on the table is not enough and the access to humanitarian responders is prohibited as well …
We’re talking about Gaza now, but next week will be the one-year anniversary of the conflict in Sudan. There’s 25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. That’s the population of Australia who needs humanitarian support.
We’re also saying that we have to lift the funding for humanitarian events generally as a country. We like to think we punch above our weight in international affairs as Australians. We’re not doing that right now. The funding available from the Australian government for humanitarian emergencies is too low overall. That’s prohibiting us doing the kind of scaled response we need to be able to do. There are plenty of places around the world that could use our support.
United States and New Zealand say they will work with ‘our mutual ally Australia’ towards shared vision
The US and New Zealand have said they will work more closely with like-minded partners to achieve their shared vision, “especially our mutual ally Australia”.
The two nations released a joint statement – which contains a reference to Aukus – after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the NZ foreign affairs minister, Winston Peters, met in Washington.
The statement reads:
To advance this shared vision, we commit today to working even more closely together not only with each other, but also with our like-minded regional partners, especially our mutual ally Australia. We see great potential for collaboration in frameworks and architectures that reflect our shared vision.
We share the view that arrangements such as the Quad, AUKUS, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity contribute to peace, security, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and see powerful reasons for New Zealand engaging practically with them, as and when all parties deem it appropriate.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken meets with New Zealand foreign minister Winston Peters. Photograph: Craig Hudson/Reuters
‘If you want to run the country, you can’t run your mouth’: Jason Clare on opposition leader
The federal education minister, Jason Clare, has slammed Peter Dutton’s comparison between the Port Arthur massacre and a pro-Palestine protest.
Speaking on Sunrise, Clare said: “If you want to run the country, you can’t run your mouth.”
Last week, Peter Dutton took the side of another country that killed an Australian citizen. This week, he’s using the murder in cold blood of 35 Australians to try to make a political point. This bloke is all aggro and no judgment …
You have other Liberals like Bridget Archer, the Tasmanian MP [who is] respected on all sides of the parliament, who has condemned Peter Dutton’s words here and called on him to apologise.
If there were more Liberals in the Liberal party like Bridget Archer, then Peter Dutton would be gone today.
Clare said it was “extraordinary” for Dutton to blame a rise in antisemitism on the Labor party and police.
The minister for education Jason Clare during question time. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Yesterday, Archer labelled Dutton’s comments “incredibly disrespectful” and “wholly inappropriate”. You can read her full response to his speech below:
Dutton’s Port Arthur comparison ‘a mistake’, Bill Shorten says
The government services minister, Bill Shorten, was also on the Today show and said while it was important to call out antisemitism, the comparison Peter Dutton has made to Port Arthur was wrong:
I do agree that some Jewish people do feel unsafe in this country for the first time, [and] it needs to be called out, but I think the one thing that Mr Dutton has made a mistake about … is conflating it with Port Arthur.
They’re two separate issues. Port Arthur was a shocking, murderous, evil act in Australia.
[The opposition leader] should work with the prime minister to call out inflammatory language here rather than throw kero on the bonfire of hate.
– from AAP
Minister for the NDIS Bill Shorten. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
