AMA calls for clear reporting of private health insurer data

Australian Medical Association

The AMA has called on APRA to scrap its plans to reduce the information provided in its quarterly private health insurance publication.

In a submission made on Wednesday, the AMA strongly stated the importance of APRA continuing to provide the detailed quarterly reports on private health insurers given their role in our health system. APRA is proposing to change the quarterly private health insurance reports so that some statistics, including membership are not included.

The AMA raised concerns with APRA earlier this year when key reporting metrics were absent from the September and December 2023 quarterly reports. This included reporting on premiums paid and insurer profits before tax. We understand that this was a result of a change to APRA’s capital and reporting framework for insurance on 1 July 2023, however we expect the reports will resume including all relevant data from the next report.

The AMA uses the publicly available data to inform our policy and for our annual Private Health Insurance Report Card. We support more data and transparency in the private health sector to drive informed policy reform.

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