Partial - Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President with Ray Hadley, Radio 2GB
HADLEY: The heat is building under these big health insurance companies over their push for big premium hikes. We've just got off the phone to Medibank Private. They're saying nothing about this until after the Federal Government signs off on the application for that hike. But you can take my word, you only had to see how angry John Howard was in New York yesterday, Medibank Private will not get anywhere near the 13 per cent they're talking about needing. My tip is most the funds will be lucky to get the tick to lift their premiums by more than about seven or eight per cent, maybe six per cent, which, of course, is bad enough.
We've had phonecalls into the Federal Health Minister, Senator Kay Patterson's office today. Hopefully she'll agree to put the Government's view. In the meantime, Dr Kerryn Phelps is the Federal President of the Australian Medical Association. She's on line. G'day, Kerryn.
PHELPS: Hello, Ray.
HADLEY: What do you think about what they're trying to do to us, the health insurance companies?
PHELPS: It is a complicated issue. I think, number one, it's politically sensitive because the Government has put a lot of investment into private health insurance and encouraging people through its carrot and stick approach to go into private health insurance funds. We have members who are really, a lot of members stretching themselves to make sure they have private insurance, and I think that what doctors and patients want to see is, number one, transparency in the process. So, if there does have to be a rise of any sort we want to see transparency in that process and, secondly, that in terms of the money that has been put into private health insurance as an industry by the taxpayers, I think it's fair enough that any value that is gained by private health insurance in terms of profits and so forth is basically given back to patients in terms of full value.
HADLEY: It's a bit hot. But, for the health insurance companies to say, 'look, the Federal Government encouraged you to join us, therefore we've got more members and obviously more premiums, but because we have more members we've got more people to pay out'. I think they expect that all the new people will come into the health insurance scheme and not get crook.
PHELPS: Well, I think that that's one thing, but obviously people who have taken out private health insurance may have been sitting on an ailment for a while and might in the first few months after their pre-existing ailment conditions expired be going to have their operations that perhaps they might have been waiting on to have. So there might be a bit of an increase there which is more than the expected increase perhaps and it would be interesting to see if those figures go down again. But the other issue to keep in mind is that the costs of providing technology also increase well in advance of the CPI. We also know that the other costs such as nurses award wages, for example, keep on going up; medical indemnity costs have gone up exponentially, particularly in New South Wales; and we also know that we really are seeing an increase in providing medical care particularly to an ageing population. But that doesn't all happen in the space of 12 months and I think what we really need to see is transparency in the process.
We also, I think, need to see a review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule which is a schedule that the Government sets and that hasn't really been reviewed properly by the Government in more than a couple of decades. So, as that falls further behind, the gaps that have to be picked up by the health insurance also increases.
HADLEY: You touched on the indemnity insurance for your members. This is - when it was just affecting doctors we didn't really concern ourselves - but all of a sudden when our festivals and fetes and social events are being affected by it, we all start to worry. So is the community now feeling what your members have been feeling for quite some time?
PHELPS: That's right, and doctors have been trying to absorb those costs and got to a point where it had to be passed on as a practice cost and, of course, in the last 12 months there's been a call on members where they had to pay a full year's subscription in addition to their normal subscription and then there was a huge hike recently which has been moderated now, thankfully, by some changes to the law by the New South Wales Government.
But we're going to have to see changes nationally to medical indemnity And the national forum which has been announced by the Prime Minister which will be happening in the early part of this year, I think, is very welcome because we do need to see a national approach to this crisis now. It is a crisis because we're seeing loss of essential services because of it in the same way as we're seeing things like fetes and functions not being able to be held because the insurance is unaffordable.
HADLEY: Appreciate your time on both those cases. Thanks a lot.
Ends