ACCC report to the Senate on private health insurance

The ACCC is consulted on its 15th annual report to the Senate on private health insurance.

This year the ACCC focused on a discrete issue affecting the private health insurance industry. We examined the practice by some insurers and their intermediaries of using end of financial-year or “tax time” advertising as a tool to encourage consumers to sign up to a fund, or to transfer between funds, in order to “beat the yearly premium increase” or to “avoid crunch time”.

The ACCC was interested to examine the features of such advertising and its impacts on consumers. In particular, we would like to gain a better understanding of consumers’ experiences when signing up to, or transferring between insurers, as a result of such campaigns.

In order to help prepare this year’s report, contributions were called for on the matters outlined in the consultation document provided below.

Submissions were welcome by Friday 30 August 2013.