Labor’s warning about the privatisation of Medibank Private have been borne out with the company reporting a massive increase in profit on the back of its soaring premiums.
Medibank has today reported a net profit of $227.6 million for the first half of the 2015/16 financial year, up 58.3 per cent on the same period last year.
The results reveal Medibank Private made a $271.7 million operating profit on private health insurance, up $100 million or almost 60 per cent in just one year.
This follows a year when Medibank increased its premiums by an average 6.59 per cent, above even the near decade high 6.2 per cent average increase across the entire sector and the 5th highest of the 35 funds.
This result again confirms that the privatisation of Medibank was simply another example of the Liberals placing ideology before patients in health care.
The Abbott/Turnbull Government consistently failed to demonstrate how the sale of Medibank would increase competition or not add to the pressure on private health insurance premiums.
Instead, the privatisation came at the same time as the Abbott/Turnbull Governments in their first two years in office approved the two largest increases to private health insurance premiums in a decade.
The Government failed to make the case for the Medibank sale and today’s figures confirm it has provided no benefit to either the health system or health insurance policyholders.