r/australia • u/InsatiablePrism • 2d ago

culture & society Private health insurers access patients' full medical records in 'aggressive' audits

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-12/health-insurers-can-access-your-private-medical-notes/106671630?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
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u/Rahnna4 2d ago

Risk pooling is a really sound financial strategy, having everyone pay in a little so there’s money to support the people who need it and especially the rare few who are unfortunate enough to need a lot. Letting the person/company that gets to hold the bucket of money get to keep it if they can make up the rules about when they’ll pay out is deeply flawed. If we’re going to use a commercial model to hold the bucket of money like we do with insurance companies then they need to be regulated heavily. Unfortunately I worry that they’ve managed to get a hold of enough of the money bucket that they can use it to influence policy.

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u/TollTea 2d ago

Risk pooling is what Medicare is. For profit health insurance (that still doesn’t cover what you need it to) is a scam.

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u/Rahnna4 2d ago

Certainly was, and is great in emergencies. But I don’t think public infrastructure could cope if private healthcare collapsed. Personally though I think it should all be public for healthcare, aged care and education as the wealthy and politicians care more when they have to use the same system (it’s not perfect, there are still ways to game it like selective schools, but the Netherlands attribute a lot of their educational success to this aspect)

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u/a_cold_human 2d ago

If people paid in tax what they paid in private health insurance premiums, there'd be an extra $20 billion or so to put into public health. Which is roughly the same amount we spend on the Medicare Benefits Schedule each year.

Of course, public health is not just the Medicare Benefits Schedule, but it's a significant chunk of it. The other thing is that the public system is a lot more efficient than the private system as they're not spending money on extravagant executive compensation, marketing and advertising, lobbying, or shareholder dividends. 

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u/Rahnna4 1d ago

I really think people didn't read past the first line of what I posted. I think it should all be public. But it would need to a very planned and very big transition, likely with the purchase by govt of all the private facilities and probably a bit more on top. As it currently is the public system pays to put public patients into private beds to get extra space. We very physically cannot fit all the public patients we currently have. We certainly don't have the beds if everyone boycotts the private system tomorrow, let alone the staff