6 December 2018 - The long wait for hip and knee ­replacements and cataract surgery in the public hospital system is being used to justify those procedures being available only in top- level insurance policies, given ­patients already have a strong ­incentive to go private.

Under planned gold, silver, bronze and basic categories of ­insurance, to be introduced from April, tens of thousands of policies will be reorganised into comparable tiers, promising members greater transparency and the ability to shop around.

However, assigning clinical services to categories proved difficult and took longer than the federal government expected. With hospital coverage falling, and concerns over rising premiums, stakeholders have also had to predict how members and prospective members will react to the changes.

Read The Australian article