Australia's health insurance policy is a huge policy failure

Comments on news report by Jessica Gardner "Health insurance premiums to rise by up to 10pc a year", 21/07/2015

It is a national disgrace and possibly and particularly for the national regulator who has the right to approve the annual rises. It reflects a serious failure in regulation. Wages and salaries in the past decade and particularly in the last 5 years have not grow much, but each year health insurances increase quite a lot.

It is failure of policy and of insurance regulation. It is a failure of national leadership as reflected by federal health minister and the department of health.

And the worst part of that is the fact that it is forced by government for people to have private health insurance and it is the government health minister who approves the annual increase. For anyone having a sane mind, it is ridiculous that the federal government acts in that way.

The federal health minister should resign or at least those bureaucrats who made the recommendations for the health insurance to increase like that.

Furthermore, while the wages and salaries for ordinary workers and employees have not grown much, federal politicians' have increased a lot almost every year. What is a further disgrace of politicians is the fact that they hide behind the so called tribunal's recommendations, an organisation having virtually no accountability and eager to please national politicians.

It seems the only thing fair is for the politicians pay rise to be inversely linked to the increase in health insurance premium.

Further, their pay should be indexed with the average increase in national wages and salaries to the maximum..