The former AMA president Dr Michael Jones has addressed the increasing cost of private health insurance and the diminishing number of people paying for it.

“Both of these problems could be significantly reduced by the simple tactic of reintroducing means-testing for “free” admission to public hospitals,” he says.

But Curtin Medical School lecturer and former chair of the Royal Australian College of GPs Dr Colin Hughes told Oly Peterson there are fundamental flaws to the means-testing proposal.

“You don’t know when you’ll need a public hospital,” he says.

Car accidents, birth complications and premature birth and a few of many circumstances where treatment wouldn’t be subsidised in a private hospital.

“The cost [of private health insurance] is getting upwards of $8 billion worth of tax payers funds,” he says.

“Just imagine what that would do if it was paid into the public hospital system for all of those kind of conditions that you do need a public hospital for.”

Press PLAY below to hear the full conversation. 

The solution he says is not to make people take out private health, but to stop spending money on giving people luxury treatment.