The Private Healthcare Puzzle: New Fees and Growing Frustrations
Reading about Healthscope’s new hospital facility fee this morning made my blood boil. The announcement of an additional $100 charge for overnight patients and $50 for day patients feels like another brick in the increasingly unstable wall of private healthcare.
Sitting in my home office, sipping my morning coffee from my favourite Carlton café, I pondered the state of our healthcare system. The latest fee announcement from Healthscope particularly stings because it comes barely a year into their multi-year contracts with insurers like Bupa. It’s worth noting that behind this decision stands Brookfield, a Canadian investment giant that now owns Healthscope.
The whole situation reminds me of my recent experience trying to arrange a routine procedure. The process felt like solving a complex puzzle where half the pieces were missing. Between calling the surgeon’s office, wrestling with the insurance company, and attempting to decipher gap payments, I spent more time on administrative tasks than I did worrying about the actual medical procedure.
What’s particularly concerning is the growing trend of private hospitals implementing these additional charges while simultaneously claiming they can’t “sustainably offer quality healthcare.” Yet, when you dig deeper, you’ll find that many of these financial pressures stem from complex property deals and corporate restructuring rather than actual healthcare delivery costs.
The public system, despite its challenges, maintains remarkable efficiency and quality of care. Speaking with friends who work in both systems, they consistently point out that private hospitals often send complex cases to public hospitals anyway. It’s becoming increasingly clear that private healthcare serves more as a pressure release valve for specific types of procedures rather than a comprehensive alternative to public healthcare.
One particularly frustrating aspect is the lack of transparency in pricing. Trying to get a clear picture of out-of-pocket expenses feels like attempting to nail jelly to a wall. Between gap payments, various excesses, and now these additional facility fees, giving “informed financial consent” has become nearly impossible.
Looking at the broader picture, we need to seriously question whether our current hybrid system is serving us well. The private health insurance industry seems caught in a death spiral of rising costs and declining membership, while hospitals owned by investment firms prioritise financial engineering over patient care.
Perhaps it’s time for a fundamental rethink of how we structure healthcare delivery in this country. The Medicare levy already provides a framework for universal healthcare funding. Rather than propping up an increasingly dysfunctional private system with taxpayer subsidies, we might be better served by strengthening and expanding our public healthcare infrastructure.
The solution isn’t simple, but one thing’s clear - the current system isn’t working for anyone except corporate stakeholders. We deserve better than being caught in the crossfire between private hospitals and insurance companies while watching our out-of-pocket costs spiral ever upward.