Private health funds are refusing to pay their bills.
And when they don't pay, you do.
Since the 1980s, private health insurers have paid for their members to use public hospitals.
But now, some private insurers are only paying half the daily cost of a bed for a patient in a public hospital.
The rest has been picked up by NSW taxpayers at a cost of $140 million every year.
That $140 million is enough for 1000 more nurses, 100 extra beds at the new Rouse Hill hospital, hundreds more surgeries or more funding to support our critical health workers.
To make matters worse, the $140 million is going direct to shareholder profits.
Private health insurance profits have risen more than 120 per cent in the past two years. It is only right that those who profit from our public hospitals pay their fair share.
And most of them do. Forty-four out of 53 health insurers, including the Nurses and Midwives Health, Navy Health, Teacher Union Health, Police Employee Health Fund and The Doctors' Health Fund are paying their bills.
But the nine that don't are undermining the world-class public hospitals that their members rely on.
And they are making more than $2 billion in profit in the process.
In 2013, then treasurer Mike Baird made a deal with the private health insurers.
They would pay their bills or the government would increase the Health Insurance Levy.
Now they have broken that pact, they've left public hospitals and fund members short-changed by almost $490 million.
It comes down to simple maths.
The cost of caring for a patient in a public hospital is $1075.
Had they stuck to the agreement they made with former treasurer Baird, insurers would pay $892 per night for a private room and $421 for a bed in a shared room.
Privately insured patients often go to public hospitals because of the excellent standard of care.
The extra insurance they pay for usually covers them for a private room.
If single rooms are available, public hospitals provide them.
That is why, months ago, in a cost-of-living crisis and well clear of the COVID pandemic, the government's June 18 budget included a warning to major insurers that they would need to resume paying the full-room rate when that is what their patients receive.
This week, spin doctors from the major insurers avoiding these payments threw mud into the water of this debate, claiming to have been "blindsided" by this "change".
But we are simply asking them to resume paying the rates that were always due, and which most funds do pay.
Regardless of their wilful blindness, there are two inescapable facts.
In the past five years, they have increased their premiums for their members, and they have reduced the rates they pay to public hospitals.
The only conclusion is that they have kept the difference, short-changing patients and taxpayers alike.
The health fund spin doctors also complained that they had only been able to meet with "someone from finance", rather than health experts.
This is true. I did not send a doctor to do a debt collector's job.
And while they continue to rip off the state's hospitals and their customers, they should not expect any different treatment.
But sadly the spin doctors seem more keen to run a scare campaign.
Their threat to increase premiums is undermined by the 44 private health funds who already do pay the agreed rate.
Paying the single room rate for a hospital is nothing new.
It's been paid for decades.
What is new is arrogant health insurers wanting to make record profits by reducing what they pay to hospitals.
Mike Baird was right 10 years ago when he demanded that private health insurers pay their fair share.
And we are right to enforce that agreement today.
