6 June 2018 - Bill Shorten’s push to cap rises on private health premiums at 2% could cause a return of ambulances “stacked up” outside hospital emergency rooms, the nation’s biggest insurer, Medibank, has warned.

Labor is expected to make healthcare a key issue in the “Super Saturday” by-elections on July 28, in which five lower house seats are up for grabs.

Medibank chief executive Craig Drummond told The Australian that if consumers were going to pay a 2% premium increase, then cost rises across the healthcare system also had to be close to 2%. He argued that the insurer could actively control its own management costs of about $600 million but it could not control the $5.3 billion of claims it paid for its customers.

Read The Australian article