MORE than 2.5 million health insurance polices have been dumped or downgraded over the past three years as Australians cut costs amid premium rises and erosion of the government rebate.
data collected by industry group Private Healthcare Australia reveals 1,576,409 policies were dumped and 985,281 downgraded between February 2012 and last December.
The industry regulator rec*orded just over 5.4 million policies with *hospital cover at the end of December.
Private Healthcare Australia chief executive Michael Armi*tage yesterday blamed the churn on the former federal Labor *government, which introduced a means test for the rebate, stripped it from the Lifetime Health Cover surcharge and tied it to inflation, not the rate of premium increases.
“The consequence of those private health insurance policies is that privately insured Australians pay more for their private health cover and when people drop out or downgrade their cover they will rely on the public system for their healthcare, *increasing pressure on our public hospitals,”