I Fear We Are Going To See More Medication Shortages In The Next Year Or Two.

This appeared earlier today

Prescription medication delays continue across the country

By Anna Cox and Paul Cook

6 April, 2025

In short:

·         Supply shortages are leaving Australians who use prescription medication without essential treatment.

·         Albany mother Shannon Roberts is fearful for her kids' mental health.

What's next?

The TGA says the supply shortage of key ADHD medication Concerta is likely to continue through to December.

When Albany mother Shannon Roberts dropped off her children's scripts to her regular pharmacy, she was surprised to be told they were out of stock.

Accessing prescriptions is becoming an issue for many Australians, due to ongoing supply shortages of multiple medications.

Ms Roberts's three children have ADHD and all require medication.

The shortage has been time-consuming and frustrating for everyone in the family.

"I put in all of our scripts to be filled five days before they were due [in January] and they couldn't be filled," Ms Roberts said.

"Since then it's been really awful."

The issue has been exacerbated by the fact that her children have experienced side effects from other ADHD medications which makes finding an alternative difficult.

"My eldest is now on her third medication change, my second eldest is waiting to be seen at a clinic in April," she said.

"My kids had horrendous side effects from Ritalin. The eldest lasted one week because we were so worried about her mental health."

Drugs in short supply

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has 400 medications listed as in short supply, including menopause hormone treatments and blood pressure medication.

Another of the drugs in short supply is Concerta, one of the most popular ADHD drugs.

18mg, 27mg, 34mg and 54mg dosages are all listed as limited in supply.

Albany pharmacist Jane McLean said supplies had ebbed and flowed in recent years.

"Last year Vyvanse was in short supply most of the year. This year Concerta is in short supply," she said.

Ms McLean said in the "last few years we've seen more out of stocks than what we've seen in the previous 10 to 15 years".

Regulations surrounding ADHD medication mean scripts can only be filled five days in advance of your last supply running out to prevent stockpiling.

ADHD WA clinical advisory board chair Roger Paterson said it could take months to find the right medication and prescription for a child, adding to the stress for families.

"The bottom line seemed to be that demand was gradually outstripping supply … there is a shortage of supply around the world," he said. 

"We are just experiencing it in our own way within the field of ADHD."

Australia at end of supply chain

The TGA said the Concerta supply shortage was likely to continue through to December this year.

Pharmacy Guild of Australia WA president Andrew Ngeow said the country was at "the end of a very long and complex worldwide supply chain".

Mr Ngeow said Australia imported 90 per cent of the medication it prescribed and created 2 per cent of the world's demand.

"When there is a shortage we are the first to feel it and the last to get replenished," he said.

Here is the link:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-06/medication-shortage-continues-adhd-menopause/105133500

It is amazing that there are apparently 400 different medications in short supply. It seems the problem is a good deal worse than most of us realized!

We really do need to develop our sovereign drug-manufacturing capacity with some sense of urgency!

This seems to me to be a little political bombshell just waiting to explode…..

David.

I Think We Need To Ask Ourselves Do We Really Trust The USA As A Strategic Partner And Ally Right Now?

I don’t know about you but I reckon the USA is no longer a reliable guarantor of our security with Donald Trump as President. The nuclear armed UK might be a much better choice at present if they would have us!

The way he has behaved since his second inauguration confirms this to me with idiocy like his lust to take over Greenland. Frankly the man has lost his marbles IMVHO.

This latest carry on with tariffs just confirms my view….

Eric Johnston

The three fatal flaws in Donald Trump’s tariff fantasy

6:31PM April 04, 2025

Bananas. It really is bananas. The US can barely grow them, while its biggest supplier, Guatemala, doesn’t do much else but pick and pack them. Abundantly.

Yet, Guatemala and its tropical neighbours have been slugged with tariffs on things like bananas, coffee and sugar as part of Donald Trump’s punishment for all their looting, pillaging, raping and plundering of the world’s biggest economy.

From next week, US consumers will pay 10 per cent more for Guatemala’s national yellow fruit. What’s their alternative on Walmart’s shelves? Nothing.

At last count, Hawaii produced less than $US6m ($9m) worth of bananas from a patchwork of small farms across its islands. The total crop size is just 128ha (318 acres) compared to Guatemala’s more than 106,800ha (264,000 acres).

The Hawaiian banana last year fetched on average US48c per kilo. It’s much smaller and lighter than the Guatemalan variety. The chances of Hawaii growing more, let alone building an industry of scale to match Guatemala’s $US1.1bn banana export machine, is next to zero.

This is one of the countless examples to show Trump’s fantasy of reversing decades of globalisation and bringing manufacturing or farming back on to US soil simply won’t hold. It really is bananas.

‘Coin-toss’

Global markets were hit dramatically by Trump’s worse-than-expected tariff plan – and that’s even before considering the ludicrous formula for determining his country-by-country punishment.

Australian shares on Friday hit correction territory, and are now tracking 10 per cent lower from their mid-February peak on worries about the outlook for China and tariff-slammed Asia.

Wall Street extended its correction, staging its biggest slump since Covid-19 hit, and Europe is preparing for losses. The odds of a US recession were sitting at about 20 per cent a month ago, that’s now shot up to 50 per cent.

“It’s a coin toss,” says Grace Su, global portfolio manager with $US190bn New York-based fund ClearBridge.

This rapidly changing investment world is all due to Trump’s promise of a golden age turning into an empty promise.

Markets have been trying to make sense of the implications of building a protectionist wall around the world’s most prosperous economy. For now they see better value elsewhere.

“Leading into all this, it was generally accepted that US exceptionalism was the best place to be. You had to be invested there. The US consumer was your friend, and that narrative was priced very expensively,” Su said.

“Now the obvious thing to me is you have to unwind some of that and actually there are so many other more interesting places to invest globally.”

Trump’s ideal of a self-reliant America is built on flawed, and even economically fatal, assumptions.

In fact, there are three: inflation, labour and (as the banana example shows) trade. They allow you to do things your economy can’t ordinarily do.

Even if this week’s announcements lead to an endless round of negotiations, the damage has been done. The world and capital flows will inevitably carry on and learn to trade without the United States and Trump.

Citi global rates strategist Ben Wiltshire sums it up. “We’re amid a tectonic shift in the foundations of global trade and economics,” he says.

He points out US inflation expectations are now rising while the outlook for interest rates across treasury yields were falling simultaneously. This is an ominous sign suggesting the reawakening of stagflation – a phenomenon of rising inflation and high unemployment – which is something the world hasn’t really dealt with since the oil crisis of the 1970s.

Trade and capital is fungible, and other nations with open economies will become wealthy trading with one another while leaving the US behind. Indeed, it could lead to a faster rising Asian middle class.

Big beef

Agriculture comes up with countless examples of doing things which can’t be done. Take US beef, which is Trump’s biggest beef with Australia.

The US cattle heard at the start of last year was 87 million head which was the smallest in more than six decades.

From a standing start, it takes up to three years to grow prime cattle from paddock to plate. That’s a long time to wait for a burger.

Then, there’s need to build capacity in the supply chains from feedlots to slaughterhouses and cold storage. The upfront investment needed on this one just product line is immense.

The US is now largely a service economy and the inability to do things isn’t just in agriculture.

Canada’s vast lakes and hydro-electric systems gives it access to low-cost electricity on the east coast. This has been the staple in building a complex Canadian manufacturing industry to deliver low-cost components, cars and the like for US consumption. Canada even exports its vast cheap power into the US. For now.

Take the symbol of US tech power, the iPhone. It’s about to be crushed by tariffs on China of up to 54 per cent. Designed in California, but using a highly sophisticated global supply chain, it is made from components across dozens of countries. Apple’s contract manufacturer, Foxconn, then assembles millions of iPhones from its massive Zhengzhou plant in China.

This hi-tech factory employs more than 200,000 people. Where in the United States is Apple or its partners going to find that many low-paid Americans willing to work on the line while US unemployment is hovering around multi-decade lows?

Apple shares this week crashed more than 9 per cent as part of the Wall Street slump.

The sheer costs of replicating a plant like Foxconn’s in labour-constrained US would also be stupefying. The massive uncertainty over Trump’s policy outlook and to what extent these tariffs are flimsy negotiating tactics would hold boards back from seriously shifting their entire business back home.

It’s not just Apple, it’s everything. Televisions, cars, shoes, laptops, aircraft components and plastics – are all labour intensive – and that’s one thing the US doesn’t have too much of without spurring on wage-led inflation.

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country,” Trump declared. “Ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”

This is wrong. Tariffs make companies lazy and less competitive, and ultimately cause prices to rise.

Nike’s nightmare

The re-shoring dream risks the US shifting from a high-productive, value-adding nation into one of lower wealth. This reallocates the potential pool of productive workers away from skilled things like software coding, construction and rocket building into lower-value jobs, like making sneakers or socks.

Shares in Nike crashed 14.4 per cent and the sneaker maker now faces a stark choice: increase its prices and lose market share or absorb the tariff through its profit margin.

Nike has been twice hit now. In recent years it shifted much of its manufacturing from China to the emerging hub of Vietnam as a hedge against Trump’s first-term tariffs. This week Vietnam was slugged with a 46 per cent tariff, compared with China’s 54 per cent.

The Bob Woodward book, Fear, which documents Trump’s first term is largely centred around his former economic adviser, Gary Cohn.

The one-time Goldman Sachs chief operating officer regularly pushed back against the President, including over his first-term shot at steel tariffs.

One passage has Cohn telling Trump plainly that even with tariffs, manufacturing is never coming back to the US, which is now built around being a service economy. Trump responds by saying if it doesn’t work, they can just roll them back.

“That’s not what you do with the US economy,” Cohn is quoted as saying. “You do something when you’re 100 per cent certain it will work, and then you pray like hell you’re right. You don’t do 50-50 with the US economy.”

There is one little-known but important purpose about trade deficits which has so riled Trump. While they are a sign of a nation spending more than it produces, deficits also offer an important pressure value for economies.

Booming, consumption-led economies generally have bigger trade deficits, because confident businesses and consumers are spending up big.

Close this release value by throttling trade and watch inflation steadily build until the financial bubble really bursts.

Deal or no deal. That’s what’s really coming for the American consumer. Just bananas.

eric.johnston@news.com.au

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/the-three-fatal-flaws-in-donald-trumps-tariff-fantasy/news-story/16afad3e2e8496064751bb5d5d12a334

At almost 80 years old I believe he is dangerously past his prime and really should be retired back to a penthouse in the Trump Tower to see out his remaining days. The prospect of almost 4 more years of Trump frankly fills me with dread!

 Sadly JD Vance is hardly a fit replacement IMVHO and I believe we are facing a pretty dangerous time in the immediate future… It is not clear to me what might happen if the US faces a serious crisis at present – so let’s hope we can avoid one!

Any clever ideas on a way out other that just ‘Keeping calm and carrying on!”?

Sorry for pointing out the sickeningly obvious….

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 788 – Results – 6 April 2025.

Here are the results of the recent poll.

Who Do You Expect To Win The Upcoming Federal Election Called For May 3, 2025?

Liberal / National                                              9 (35%)

Labor                                                               11 (42%)

I Have No Idea                                                 6 (23%)

Total No. Of Votes: 26

Looks like a slight win to Labor on this small poll

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Poor voter turnout. 

6 of 26 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

Peter Garrett Makes Good Case For Leaving The Nuclear Option Alone For A Good While Yet!

This appeared last week:

I’ve spent my life fighting nuclear. Here’s what Dutton isn’t telling you about his reactors

Peter Garrett

Musician, activist and politician

March 30, 2025 — 5.00am

Today’s voter has it tough, especially younger Australians who get much of their information from apps. It’s daunting to sort fact from fiction in the Wild West world of online media, where hidden agendas and speculative opinion are rife. All the more so when a party’s policy only truly makes sense if viewed through a wider lens.

Peter Dutton’s promise to build seven small-scale nuclear reactors, ostensibly to help meet future energy needs while keeping carbon emissions at bay, therefore needs to be seen for what it really is: a staggeringly bad idea, a stunt and a con. It is a backdoor attempt to pander to the fossil fuel lobby – and under the electoral spotlight, more people will figure that out.

Younger voters understandably won’t know that a generation their age once packed Myer Music Bowl with Midnight Oil, INXS and other friends to “Stop the Drop”. They won’t remember our Nuclear Disarmament Party campaign, which won Senate seats in WA and NSW in the ’80s. They can’t know what it was like to grow up during the Cold War era or live through horrific meltdowns at the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plants, which were also “completely safe” until the day that they weren’t. But generations Y and Z can still smell a rotten idea when they give it a good sniff.

At first blush, nuclear energy is causing less concern to younger voters, who haven’t yet taken a closer look. When they do, they will find that most experts and qualified observers view the proposal as expensive, difficult to implement, prone to significant uncertainty and full of rubbery figures.

One example is the fanciful assumption that nuclear plants could be built in 12 years. Twenty years would be more likely – if they are built at all. Cost overruns and safety issues are equally certain. And the carbon consequences of prolonging our old coal-fired power generators are dire.

This deceptive proposal has all the Trumpian hallmarks: a quasi policy announcement intended to serve sectional interests – in this case fossil fuel conglomerates – while simultaneously serving up a cartoon enemy as ideological whipping boy, namely renewable energy.

Australia has abundant sunlight, plenty of wind, plus lots of pumped hydro resources that can all be converted by increasingly efficient technologies. Stored batteries are ramping up too. The butterfly has emerged from the chrysalis and taken to the skies – the renewable energy transition is well under way. Construction costs will keep coming down. Supply will keep going up. The future is already here.

By wrenching the country off this course, Dutton’s plan would leave old, dirty coal-fired power stations staggering on at increasing risk of breakdown, putting off the day of reckoning when we finally stop polluting and heating our world and get on with using affordable, reliable energy that does not cause more climate chaos.

What possible reason is there for Australia to embark on building a completely new, expensive energy infrastructure we don’t need and which, incidentally, is already illegal in states where the reactors are meant to go?

Nuclear energy features eye-watering costs, which history repeatedly shows blow out. It features risks associated with managing radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years. It is also a massive safety risk from both accidents and attacks.

To cap the charade, this policy comes from the parties that supposedly champion free enterprise and want to reduce government spending, yet the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to fund the Coalition’s nuclear plan are to be borne by all of us, the taxpayer. Go figure!

The trend line is unarguable: renewable energy is cleaner, greener and getting cheaper every year. It will supersede fossil fuels in the blink of an evolutionary eye. Nuclear is a last-gasp delaying tactic.

Over 4 million Australian homes and businesses have solar panels on their roofs. South Australia routinely produces 75 per cent and sometimes up to 100 per cent of its power from renewables and is racing towards net zero, with the other states in hot pursuit. Most electricity added to global supply comes from clean energy.

When the Climate Change Authority, headed by former NSW Liberal government treasurer Matt Kean, released a report showing Dutton’s policy would result in a 2 billion-tonne blowout in dirty emissions, the Coalition’s response was to play the man and not the ball and threaten Kean.

When a group of eminent former defence chiefs raised the spectre of nuclear plants scattered across the country vulnerable to the risk of terrorism and accidents, the Coalition response was virtual silence.

When farmers, scientists and community groups questioned the impact on precious groundwater of thirsty nuclear reactors running 24/7, the Coalition response was a shrug.

Compare this with Peter Dutton’s proud promise that if elected, within 50 days he would approve the massive Browse Basin gas development in WA.

Due to its size, the Browse project is known as a “carbon bomb”, given it will release more than 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and blow Australia’s modest greenhouse emissions targets to smithereens.

In these circumstances, the Coalition promise of boosting fossil fuels with “boutique” nuclear reactors coming on stream at some mythical future date to satisfy energy needs and reduce costs is an utter chimera.

It is best understood as a delaying tactic, an Aussie version of Trump’s “drill baby drill”, buying more time for multinational carbon producers to keep making super profits and heating the planet at our expense.

And there is another effect of the policy: it buttresses claims that Australia should become a site for the storage of large quantities of radioactive nuclear waste generated by other countries.

Periodically there are calls for Australia’s outback, with its stable geology and low population density, to be the site for disposal of the world’s radioactive waste. It’s an idea that has been rejected before, but don’t expect it to go away soon.

Recently, a senior US official chided Australia for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about uranium mining. In the transactional Trumpworld we now inhabit, new AI facilities envisaged by Amazon, Meta, Google and the like are expected to draw vast amounts of power, often touted as coming from nuclear.

Given the US still doesn’t have a licensed, permanent nuclear waste site after 50 years of furious debate and unsuccessful political negotiation, storage and disposal of new streams of radioactive waste will be crucial.

If the US president can posit buying Greenland and incorporating Canada as the 51st state, impose tariffs on America’s trading partners at will, and promise to end the war in Ukraine in a day, who is to say earmarking Australia as an international nuclear waste dump is a fanciful scenario? Can anyone imagine “Temu Trump” saying no?

As for polls showing younger Australians are less concerned about nuclear energy … not so fast. I’m confident that equipped with relevant facts, and mindful of the scale of the climate crisis they have inherited, they’ll see Dutton’s nuclear con job in a whole new light by the time we get to polling day.

Peter Garrett is a former Labor minister for the environment and a member of Midnight Oil.

I think it is fair to say there is presently zero urgency in deciding to go with nuclear energy. My view is that we check every decade or so to see if facts have changed and nuclear power has become a live and useful option. At some time in the future it may be, but not now or for the next decade or two!

David.

Apple Is Providing A Hearing Test For The Masses. Certainly A Worthwhile Screening Test!

 This appeared last week:

How Apple’s new hearing test and AirPods ‘hearing aids’ stack up

Jared Lynch

30 March 2025

In crowded, noisy venues I often find myself smiling and nodding instead of listening to a conversation. I’m not being rude, It’s just I can’t hear exactly what’s being said.

So when Apple released a software update last week that allowed people to perform a hearing test at home with a pair of AirPods Pro 2 earbuds and an iPhone or iPad, I was keen to give it a shot.

It has been about 20 years since I had a hearing test with an audiologist. The test was in a mobile booth in a van at Timboon in regional Victoria. The good news was back then I had no hearing loss.

And I haven’t been back since.

This is a mistake. Ear and Hearing Australia recommends adults aged 18-40 have a test every three to five years. And those aged 40-60 should have one every one to three years.

More troubling is that people who start feeling some type of loss don’t seek treatment for up to 10 years afterwards.

This is what Apple is hoping to change. When I sat down with Apple’s vice president of health, Sumbul Desai, she told me that the new hearing test did not aim to replace audiologists but create more awareness and encourage people to seek professional health treatment.

How accurate is the test?

The Therapeutic Goods Administration quietly approved the test in December. Apple says it is clinically validated and was developed using more than 150,000 “real world” audiograms and “millions of simulations”.

But it’s not perfect.

The challenge is finding a quiet space, like an audiologist’s booth. I sat down at a desk in regional Victoria where I had nothing but birdsong in the background – but even the occasional tweet was enough to distract my hearing in the test.

Apple aims to overcome such difficulties by playing the range of tones at different frequencies several times in case someone mishears.

How long does it take?

Apple says it can take around 5 minutes. If you take your time reading the instructions and screen prompts before the test, It can take about eight minutes, which is reasonably quick.

It starts by ensuring that the AirPods fit in your ear correctly, to create a seal. The left ear is tested first. Tones are played through the earbuds and you tap the screen when you hear them. When that is completed the right ear is tested and then you’re given a summary of your hearing.

Apple says this summary can be displayed in the Health app so a user can discuss it with a doctor or audiologist later.

The results?

Apple's vice president of health Sumbul Desai says the hearing test feature augments the work of audiologists.

I tested myself twice. Both displayed little to no loss, which was a relief. Apple says individuals with healthy hearing can hear very low sounds close to 0 decibels. According to my test, my left ear recorded -7, which was odd In another test it recorded 2dB. I tested again and recorded 3dB for my left ear. Apple says the quieter the room, the more accurate test, and during the first test, there was a bit of birdsong in the background.

Regardless, I have readouts of all tests, so I can book time with audiologist to discuss my hearing health further.

What do audiologists say?

Australians can now peforrm a hearing test using Apple AirPods Pro 2 and an iPhone or iPad.

Devin McCaslin of the University of Michigan’s audiology program describes the test as a “helpful first step” for someone who suspects they might have hearing loss and needs treatment.

“In-person tests with an audiologist offer much more,” Dr McCaslin says.

“We have the ability to control the testing environment, use advanced diagnostic tools and assess more than just hearing sensitivity, like speech understanding and middle-ear function. Plus, we can tailor recommendations based on a person’s unique hearing profile and overall health.”

What about using AirPods as a hearing aid?

Dr McCaslin says a barrier to treatment, besides cost (hearing aids can cost thousands of dollars) is “the stigma” – people think hearing aids make them look old, unlike glasses which have become fashionable.

“But kids wear AirPods (which cost $399). My daughter and son wear them everywhere,” Dr McCaslin says.

“Therefore, the stigma isn’t really an issue, and the cost is quite reasonable, especially if you’re already purchasing them as headphones. Other hearing aid manufacturers have been working to connect their devices to different smartphone platforms, but Apple’s platform stands out for its seamless integration between its products.”

Apple also provides an explanation about the audiogram and hearing ranges.

Apple is also aiming to prevent loss as well as enhance hearing. While the tips on the AirPods Pro 2 provide up to 10dB of passive noise reduction, the H2 chip helps to actively reduce louder noises 48,000 times a second.

What this means, according to a National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) study, is AirPods Pro 2’s active noise cancellation function can reduce background sounds by up to 27dB on average. So it can reduce sounds in a noisy restaurant, which can be around 80dB, to the level of a normal conversation, which is around 60dB, for example.

NAL principal engineer Nicky Chong-White said reducing background noise has several benefits.

“It lowers the risk of noise-induced hearing loss by reducing the need to turn up the volume. Additionally, it enhances the clarity of calls and music, and it may even reduce stress related to exposure to loud noise,” she said.

Apple has also developed a conversation booster function, so people can wear their AirPods in noisy venues – like a crowded restaurant – to better hear speech. This is unlike conventional hearing aids, which amplify all sounds.

I have found myself wearing AirPods – playing no music – to access this function, which works well – even for healthy ears.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/how-apples-new-hearing-test-and-airpods-hearing-aids-stack-up/news-story/bd28df0f0881d6601b1edfed563a3a75

It certainly sounds like Apple have a useful screening test system here which could be used to identify loss and lead on to more formal testing and diagnosis.

Interesting to see the niche roles Apple seems to be finding for itself!

David.

What Can Be Done To Keep The Cost Of Health Insurance Under Control?

This appeared last week:

The healthcare policies rising at more than double the average

Michael Smith Health editor

Mar 23, 2025 – 1.53pm

Private health insurers are slugging some top-tier policyholders with annual premium rises of up to 9 per cent, more than double Labor’s approved average, prompting Health Minister Mark Butler to seek fresh advice into whether funds are price gouging.

Major funds including Bupa, Medibank, HCF, and NIB have written to policyholders in the past fortnight advising them of premium hikes ranging from 7 per cent to 9.4 per cent on “gold” and “silver” policies from April 1, according to 14 letters sent by disgruntled policyholders to The Australian Financial Review.

This is well above the 3.7 per cent industry average approved by Butler last month and also higher than the average increases for individual insurers. Bupa’s average premium increase was 5.1 per cent, HCF’s 2.8 per cent, Medibank’s 4 per cent and NIB’s 5.8 per cent, according to government data.

While insurers are allowed to increase annual premiums more than the average because some policies rise more than others, Butler said he had asked the Health Department to advise him if insurers were price gouging customers following the latest premium round, the process that determines annual increases in policy prices.

“During the recent premium round, we scrutinised insurers on this to ensure they weren’t continuing to rip off customers in this way,” Butler said in response to questions from the Financial Review.

“I have been clear to insurers: we will continue to monitor this closely. If it continues to happen, then I will force them to stop.”

Labor has put healthcare at the centre of its federal election campaign as it seeks to lower the cost of medicines and doctor visits, although managing the rising cost of health insurance is more challenging.

In December, Butler called out the practice of funds retiring cheaper gold-tier products and replacing them with almost identical ones at a higher cost – which is called “phoenixing” – after it emerged some funds had increased the price of some top-tier products by 21 per cent in 2023 and 14 per cent in 2024.

Insurers say they are doing nothing wrong and some policies will increase more than others, reflecting the rising cost of providing healthcare services and medical devices and specialist fees. But they also admit that gold coverage is increasingly becoming unaffordable and more people are switching to lower-tier products.

“People are downgrading their health cover due to the cost-of-living crisis. Our data from health funds shows 216,000 policies were downgraded during the first half of 2024, meaning health insurers collected $52 million less in revenue last year,” said Rachel David, chief executive of industry body Private Healthcare Australia.

“When fewer people hold gold and silver cover, this increases the risk pool and costs for those tiers.”

People with top-end cover more likely to claim

She said there are bigger premium rises for more comprehensive cover such as silver and gold tiers because they cover the most expensive treatments in the system such as obstetrics, psychiatry, joint replacement surgery, and weight loss surgery.

People taking out those policies are more likely to make a claim than people with lower levels of cover. Insurers also do not want to encourage patients to shift in and out of gold policies just when they know they will use them, for example, if they are planning to have a baby.

Some policyholders say they feel insurers are trying to force them out of existing policies by jacking up the price.

“They just keep aggressively raising the cost of my policy, I assume to make me drop it. They told me I couldn’t change my existing policy such as dropping extras without moving onto a new plan,” said Julia, a healthy 54-year-old from Sydney’s inner west. Her Bupa gold policy is rising 8.8 per cent to $374 per month from April 1. When she joined in 2010, her policy cost $135.45 per month.

Mary, whose family silver policy with HCF is increasing 8.7 per cent to $433.88 per month, said her insurer singled out “significant out-of-contract payments” to private hospitals and higher fees to use public hospital beds in NSW as the reason for the increase.

Private hospitals, which are campaigning for profitable health funds to give them more funding as they struggle with soaring costs, slammed the above-average increases.

“If 8-9 per cent is the reality from the big end of town, it’s a massive gouge no one, including the minister, should be tolerating,” said Brett Heffernan, chief executive of the Australian Private Hospitals Association.

“Last year, the Commonwealth ombudsman lifted the lid on phoenix policies. This loophole-exploiting practice sees health insurers scrap existing products, replace them with near-identical services and sell them at a higher price. At the time, the minister asked the insurers to stop it. Clearly, a more strident response is necessary.”

A spokesman for the ombudsman said some policies would have a smaller percentage cost increase than others, but it would expect more complaints in coming months as members are notified of the rises.

Analysts said higher-than-average policy rises on existing policies are not unreasonable.

“For example, Bupa’s average rate increase is 5.1 per cent, but some policies within their product catalogue are actually decreasing in price under certain circumstances. This means that, conversely, some policies will see increases well beyond the 5.1 per cent average,” Chris Quinn, general manager of comparison site Health Deal, says.

“Gold-tier policies have seen substantial price increases. Many members require coverage for services like pregnancy and IVF for only a short period. Once they no longer need these benefits, they often opt for lower-tier policies. ”

For example, in Victoria, the most affordable pregnancy-inclusive policy for a single person is approximately $2895 per year. Given that specialist fees for pregnancy in Victoria average around $3600, with hospital costs adding another $6700, health funds must strike a balance between setting sustainable premiums and covering the higher likelihood of claims on comprehensive policies like gold.”

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/companies/healthcare-and-fitness/the-health-care-policies-rising-at-more-than-double-the-average-20250319-p5lkp5

I have to say the example at the bottom of this article really show what we are up against in getting the pricing of private health insurance right and fair for all parties!

Is seems to me this is a problem that is ripe for a total re-think to make cost and prices fair for both customer and insurer. I reckon this problem is one that occupies a good deal of Mr Butler’s time, as right now it does not seem sustainable.

What do you think?

David.

More Reasons To Be Concerned About Where Trump Goes Next!

This appeared a few days ago:

John Durie

Surprising fallout from the instability of an unchecked Trump

4:38 PM March 28, 2025

US President Donald Trump came to power to make the country great again but the initial business enthusiasm has given way to outright fear on the bourse and across business.

Some conservative Americans are working out whether and how to get their money out of the country before disaster strikes.

Business likes certainty and Trump is the antithesis, even if his supporters say his programs will translate into longer term growth.

His attack on the multilateral trade system means his impact is global.

The federal election in Australia just adds to the caution on the local bourse after an anaemic budget. In the past six weeks an overvalued equities market has dropped 600 points or circa 9 per cent and is now trading at around 18.5 times forecast earnings.

There are some positives which may be lost on some investors.

UBS strategist Richard Schellbach has noted 34 per cent of the ASX 200 is now comprised of what he calls growth stocks, up from 23 per cent in 2018, or a third of the market.

After struggling last year, income stocks are also back in vogue in these uncertain terms as outlined recently by MST’s Hasan Tevfik.

Bank deposits are no longer safe havens, so alternatives are being sought and the field is wider than high-dividend paying bank stocks.

A portfolio of the top dividend yield stocks returned just 1.3 per cent last year against an ASX 200 that returned 11.4 per cent.

In the first two months of this year the top quintile of dividend yielders have returned 2.5 per cent while the ASX 200 provided a total return of just 60 basis points before slipping into negative territory on price terms.

Tevfik explains the return of income stocks by moves in bond yields – last year bond yields in Australia increased. The Aussie five-year bond yield rose 32 basis points but fell by 12 basis points for the first two months of 2025.

Yield investing has worked best when bond yields are falling and this has certainly been the case more recently too. Tevfik figures “the combination of a weakening global growth outlook and further RBA rate cuts should mean lower Aussie bond yields in the medium term”.

MST’s ideas for good income-producing stocks include Vicinity, Origin, Challenger, JB Hi-Fi and Steadfast.

Tefvik drew a line under stocks with a dividend yield below the market’s median yield of 3.2 per cent and his advanced income strategy is headlined by Origin at 5.8 per cent and Vicinity, followed by BOQ. He avoids stocks that issue too much equity because that reduces earnings per share and by definition rely on external capital to fund growth instead of internally generated funds.

Goldman’s Matt Ross includes one flyer on his list, US-based boutique investment manager GQG Partners, along with Aurizon, Ampol, Rio and Santos.

GQG is not for the faint of heart, a classic buy-the-dip scenario, given the stock has fallen some 23 per cent in the past few months as global stock markets have wobbled.

But funds under management last year rose 45 per cent to $US148.2bn ($235.6bn) and revenues by 47 per cent

Shellbach is stressing the more growth-oriented focus of the ASX 200 as offering appeal some international investors have failed to grasp, now outpacing value stocks.

The market has changed.

Since 2004 banks’ share of the ASX 200 has slipped from 27.4 to 26.1 per cent, resources have stayed flat at just over 22 per cent, food and beverage has slipped from 4 per cent to 0.8 per cent but healthcare has exploded from 2.8 per cent to 9.8 per cent and info tech from 0.5 per cent to 3.3 per cent. In early 1980s miners accounted for 80 per cent of the ASX value, now they are 22 per cent.

……

Political process

The fact federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers slipped out the ACCC treatise on supermarkets underlines the political process.

The ACCC has of course already issued proceedings against Coles and Woolworths for alleged dodgy discounts but its report provided no smoking gun because maybe there isn’t one to be found.

Full credit to the ACCC then for not making up a yarn to satisfy Chalmers.

Election aside, the Treasurer has some work to do to increase transparency around the code to give perishable fruit and vegetable growers a better deal and better notice for consumers. These need changes to the code by Chalmers if he actually accepts the ACCC’s recommendations.

The bad news of course is Chalmers has already given the ACCC control of the supermarket code, which means small suppliers have to fight the bureaucracy to get heard.

An informal settlement process gave the small suppliers at least a chance of being heard.

Critical deals

Australia’s strength in critical minerals is underlined by the fact deals listed on the ASX in the sector are more than double that of its nearest rival, Toronto.

The relative strength of the sector is obviously part of the story, but the ASX has proved a happy stamping ground for raising capital in a field in which private capital rarely plays.

According to the International Energy Agency, Australia has 6 per cent of the world’s known critical mineral reserves, well behind China at 48 per cent, Brazil at 23 per cent and India at eight.

Demand for rare earths is tipped to increase 62 per cent by 2040 if countries meet their climate pledges and demand for nickel will be up 73 per cent, cobalt by 80 per cent and lithium by 400 per cent.

The case for more minerals processing is shown by China which has 23 per cent of global copper production and 44 per cent of refined copper.

Investor support clearly helps.

Macquarie Capital is a key player in capital raising having led on 24 per cent of the deals in the sector over the past five years.

The sector has emerged a potential bargaining chip with the US as President Trump attempts to overthrow the multilateral trading system with his campaign of unilateral tariff hikes.

But everyone has learned expected behaviour and President Trump are oxymorons.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/surprising-fallout-from-the-instability-of-an-unchecked-trump/news-story/b92eb2a89f49c226d3e36b97b819fdfe

This is an interesting article showing just how complex the business scene has become and how we need to watch closely for unintended outcomes. Some of the recent actions by Government have seemed to me to be really unnecessary – especially around supermarkets. They know they are closely watched, don’t want any trouble, so I am sure they do their best to avoid attention – and try to just get on with business!

Lots of this has the smell of political beat-ups to me. What do others think?

It could be all the beating up on supermarkets is just a reflection of frustration with how little Government can to about Trump – or is that too wild an idea???

Is there a reason you can think of that the supermarkets want to do anything other than just serve their customers needs for a profit, and avoid unwanted attention from regulators and Governments?

David.