New Zealand's largest health insurer recently announced it was facing large increases in the medical costs it was insuring.
Southern Cross Healthcare (SCH) said its cost of claims has jumped 10 percent for the year ending December 2009, and this follows an 8 percent rise the previous year. Average premiums are set to rise 12% in the current financial year to June 30.
At the same time as warning it will soon have to either raise premiums or cut back on coverage, it said it wanted to see tax concessions for those people who buy private medical insurance.
The only political party who advocate this is UnitedFuture. Its only member of parliament is the government's Associate Health Minister, Peter Dunne, and he issued a statement welcoming the call.
This comes at a time when Southern Cross used the access of its membership of the IFHP to compare the New Zealand costs of many popular medical procedures with those in many other countries. It showed that we have few cost advantages here, even compared to the USA. Results of the SCH review were published in the Sunday Star-Times.
A key reason given for making health-care insurance premiums tax-deductible is that going private relieves pressure on the public system.
But if the Minister of Revenue can't allow any exemptions for GST (such as on food), what chance is there of tax-deductibility for medical insurance premiums?
If there was such a scheme, who would 'win', who would 'lose'?
Would it be a good idea? We are interested in your views.
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