In a so-called “cost of living crisis”, over 15,000 more people joined Southern Cross last year – and that’s just one company. They now have almost a million customers.
Having delt with my company recently over a series of issues, I can inform you I pay over $4000 a year and I have never made a claim in my life.
So far, they are winning.
But I know a person who had an operation the other day that had a value attached of $40 thousand. It wasn’t a major operation, the surgeon did seven of them that day.
Seven operations at $40 thousand, that’s a lot of business for one surgeon in one day, in one clinic. Which would explain why Southern Cross was paying out $6 million a day last year.
Think about it – $6 million for every business day last year
My obvious question is what's wrong with us? Half of members made a claim last year – there were over 3 million actual claims. How is that possible?
As a result of all these claims Southern Cross ran a deficit. They also had to deal with increased cost of claims.
That’s 50%. That 50% by the way, compares to 33% in 2019. So, in the past handful of years there has been an explosion in medical claims. Why?
Knees up 17%, colonoscopy up 17%, hips up 11% - is that age? Are we all just literally falling apart?
The simple reality is this can't continue. Well it can, but at a price, and is it any surprise the price is going up?
Part of the reason the insurance numbers getting up I have no doubt is because the public system is under pressure.
So a public system not working well on anything outside emergency, and the private system under pressure from ever growing numbers of claims, is it possible we are not well as a country?
How come so many people are actively engaged with the health system? Are we worse than Australia, for example, and if so, why?
How long can a private model go for whereby the prices go up and up, along with the claims? We seemingly getting sicker and sicker – why?
Is this not the cold hard truth that when they say health is a bottomless pit, it’s true? Because these numbers show it is.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
Seven operations at $40 thousand, that’s a lot of business for one surgeon in one day, in one clinic. Which would explain why Southern Cross was paying out $6 million a day last year.
Think about it – $6 million for every business day last year
My obvious question is what's wrong with us? Half of members made a claim last year – there were over 3 million actual claims. How is that possible?
As a result of all these claims Southern Cross ran a deficit. They also had to deal with increased cost of claims.
That’s 50%. That 50% by the way, compares to 33% in 2019. So, in the past handful of years there has been an explosion in medical claims. Why?
Knees up 17%, colonoscopy up 17%, hips up 11% - is that age? Are we all just literally falling apart?
The simple reality is this can't continue. Well it can, but at a price, and is it any surprise the price is going up?
Part of the reason the insurance numbers getting up I have no doubt is because the public system is under pressure.
So a public system not working well on anything outside emergency, and the private system under pressure from ever growing numbers of claims, is it possible we are not well as a country?
How come so many people are actively engaged with the health system? Are we worse than Australia, for example, and if so, why?
How long can a private model go for whereby the prices go up and up, along with the claims? We seemingly getting sicker and sicker – why?
Is this not the cold hard truth that when they say health is a bottomless pit, it’s true? Because these numbers show it is.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
14 comments:
Gee I wonder
Perhaps a higher % of NZ population persisted with experimental jabs for longer?
How much longer are we going to pretend they were “safe & effective” when it’s plainly clear they were neither?!???
As Big Pharma say, it imore profitable to have a lot of sick folk using drugs than to cure them......
Amazing the difference between pre-2020 and now. Wonder what happened in the last 5 years? Ah, must be age!
“That’s 50%. That 50% by the way, compares to 33% in 2019. So, in the past handful of years there has been an explosion in medical claims. Why”?
Gee Mike, maybe it’s the “safe and effective” bio-weapon that was rolled out as a vaccine?
Rather than blame the Covid vaccine, the reality is that the public health system is a disaster. Shutting the country down for 2 year has severely damaged the country.
I read the other day that the cost of producing a bag of saline for a drip is just $3-4 but in the US hospitals charge the insurance companies $400-$500 for the it.
How much of that sort of thing goes on in NZ?
More baby-boomers passed there "Best Before" date.
Self employed who have health insurance - NO problem. Salaried Corporates and others who have employee remuneration packages including Health Insurance is just theft off the taxpayer as they should be paying Income tax on that freebie
Not sicker and sicker. There is just more they can do for people now. They can do all manner of things to find illnesses early now, so you can live longer by preventative surgery, whereas before you would've
died of a disease you never knew you had. For example, brain bleeds, heart disease etc
have you tried to getting a surgical booking for orthopedic surgeon, say for knee or foot injury recently in Waikato, no bookings available till Feb 25... they are booked up, raking it in.
It is standard practice for the msm to sneer at those of means and generous incomes. Overlooked is that the top 10% contribute hugely disproportionately to the tax take, extensively at 39%, often meet much of their health costs, any rest home care, and offspring are denied many benefits in the education system. The problem now is that those ordinary fok who expect health problems are taking insurance and burdening the wealthy already there despite in normal health.
Blame the baby boomers (as always), So said Fred.
Knees, hips & colonoscopies?
Perhaps the vaccine that wasn’t has exacerbated symptoms of poor health, but I would suggest such claims are simply down to sedentary lifestyles & high consumption of processed foods, that it’s a case of too many people sitting far too much & eating too much rubbish.
A trip to a mall easily confirms we’re one of the fattest & unhealthiest (by choice) nations on earth…..& why NZers are so easy to spot in a crowd in Europe.
They do. It is a fringe benefit, and is taxed.
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