Commentary: Australia's Health Insurance Situation

tl;dr: The situation in Australia's health insurance is pretty screwed up and it is great seeing that the new government is taking action into making the insurance for normal Australian's worthwhile to pay for it while maintaining proper payouts for the health professionals so therefore less out of pocket payments. Otherwise if this continues to go on, the premiums paid will soon be outstripping the benefits paid and there'll be no point in getting a health insurance. A consultation is a start, but this problem has been been plaguing in all the healthcare industry in Australia for a while. 

Breaking news! (or not so breaking)

Australia's health insurance's premium has been rising at a good steady rate of 7% average (which is way over the normal consume price index of roughly 2-3% per year) in the past 10 years as you can see here in a long documentation by the ADA inc complied since 2014. The health insurance has been doing this ever since 2001 and has been achieving mind-blowing surpluses in their finances.So if the premiums are increasing more than the health costs, and the benefit payout is staying stalemate/not changing according to the price index...which means patients will have to pay more for their dental treatments. Bad for patients, bad for dentists and bad for everyone except the insurance companies.This is why it's good news that, finally, the government has been listening to what the ADA inc. has been talking about for a long time that the government is doing a public consultation in private health insurance as reported by the ABC.Of course, the ADA is VERY welcome that they finally paid attention.The consultation website can be found here, so fill out the survey to put your voice with the government to set things straight.Of course, the anti-competitive nature of the private health insurance also attracted the ACCC.   So what are your thoughts about this situation. Leave your comments below for a discussion!