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Media Centre
The Australian Private Hospitals Association (APHA) is committed to providing timely comment on current and emerging issues, and being responsive to media enquiries, as a vital conduit to the public. Media requests for comment should be directed to APHA's Director - Public Affairs, Partnerships and Events Lilly Tawadros on M: 0422 337 867 or via E: .
July 2025
- 18 Jul 2025
Why bundled payments fail maternity patients
A pitch by the health insurance lobby to bundle maternity services is as reckless as it is self-serving. Bundling is often code for cost-cutting on individual clinical needs to save insurers a buck...
June 2025
- 25 Jun 2025
Insurers being brought to heel a good start
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler says the funding ratio from insurers to hospitals will be around 87% by the end of this financial year. If true, we would very much welcome it. But the proof is yet to be seen...
- 12 Jun 2025
Has Minister Butler reneged on deadline for insurers to pay up?
The private health insurance industry has failed to adhere to Health Minister Butler's demand to pay more to hospitals or be regulated. We await the Minister acting...
- 6 Jun 2025
Insurance exclusions main cause of out-of-pocket costs
While insurers try to shift blame to specialists for out-of-pocket costs, in reality it's their own exclusions in policies that leave most patients to foot higher bills...
May 2025
- 30 May 2025
Insurers paying even less from their growing coffers
Wow! APRA's last quarter results on the health insurance industry show the ratio of benefits paid to private hospitals over December-March plummeted from 83% to a paltry 80.7%. Come on Minister Butler - time's up for this insurance racket...
- 29 May 2025
Toowong Private Hospital to close
An icon of quality acute mental health in Brisbane for a half-century, Toowong Private Hospital will close its doors permanently at the hands of greedy insurance companies and a federal government that has been negligent for two-and-a-half-years...
- 1 May 2025
When did reform in healthcare become a dirty word
Lots of big spending announcement in this election campaign, but no sign of a serious policy reform agenda. With every segment of Australian healthcare in crisis, lazy policy remains the prognosis for the future...
April 2025
- 9 Apr 2025
Coalition can't dodge need for urgent health reform
We welcome Minister Butler's belated nod or insurers to pay hospitals more from their ever-growing coffers. His ultimatum to pay within three months is not before time. The Coalition's parroting of the insurers' talking points is disturbing...
- 8 Apr 2025
Health insurance companies crying poor beggars belief
Minister Butler is late to the party, but Labor seems to have come to the realisation that allowing the health insurance industry to run amok and abuse its market dominance to short-change hospitals is not in the interests of patients or healthcare...
- 7 Apr 2025
Butler pledges fix for funding mess Dutton must follow
Private hospitals welcome Minister Butler's doubling down on his pledge to regulate health insurance companies if they do not meet his three-month deadline to pass on more from their ever-expanding coffers. The Coalition must match it...
- 2 Apr 2025
Premiums up, politicians mute & patients worse off
With health insurance premiums on the way up, insurers are making even more than expected, both sides of politics are mute on the exorbitant profit taking, while insured patients are losing out...
March 2025
- 5 Mar 2025
Private hospitals back public-private solution for IV fluids
The lack of sovereign capacity in the development of intravenous fluids was a clear gap exposed through the COVID pandemic. The Federal Government and Baxter Healthcare are to be commended for moving to jointly fill the void...
- 5 Mar 2025
Private hospitals see light at end of the tunnel
In an election-eve bombshell, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has put an ultimatum to health insurers to pay more to private hospitals or be regulated to do so...
- 5 Mar 2025
When insurers choose, patients lose: peak bodies
APHA, CHA and MTAA join forces to hold the rampant private health insurance industry to account for their failure to adequately fund patients and private hospitals, while also rebutting the insurers desperate bid to avoid their obligations...
February 2025
- 26 Feb 2025
Insurers maternity pitch fails to deliver
When people's premiums are being banked by insurance companies instead of covering the actual costs of healthcare in private hospitals, is it any wonder services, like maternity, are closing?...
- 26 Feb 2025
Premiums up: Patients pay price, hospitals left in lurch
On the back of an average 3.73% health insurance premium hike awarded by Federal Health Minister Mark Butler today, insurers will pocket an extra $2.23 billion from peoples' insurance policies, while still short-changing healthcare providers...
- 18 Feb 2025
APRA data exposes insurer claims on 88 cents as a untrue
Repeated claims by the health insurance industry that they are meeting the 88% threshold for benefits paid to hospitals for patient care have been blown out of the water by the latest APRA data...
- 12 Feb 2025
Federal Government's job to fix funding fiasco
Private hospitals endorse the AMA's 'Private Health Insurance Report Card 2024' is yet another clarion call to the Federal Government to act now on the funding crisis allowed to manifest and deepen on its watch...
- 10 Feb 2025
It's broke so fix it!
APHA launches in-hospital poster campaign to raise awareness of the funding mess the insurance industry is leaving in its wake towards even higher record profits and management fees. The Federal Government must act...
January 2025
- 22 Jan 2025
Lift the moratorium on psychiatrists now
During a mental health crisis when psychiatrists are as rare as hen's teeth, you'd think the government would pull out all stop to fix it. Instead, bureaucracy is preventing qualified doctors from treating patients. It's madness!...
- 16 Jan 2025
Annual premium charade continues
We've see this pantomime before. The Health insurers put up initial ambit claims for premium hikes, the Minister tells them to 'sharpen their pencils'. In the end, they get what they always expected and insured patients pay more while getting less...