26 July 2019 - Australians who grew up with Medicare continue to shun health insurance, with new figures showing health funds losing about 100,000 members aged under 35 each year.

While people born since 1984 have enjoyed lifelong universal healthcare under Medicare, insurers need the premiums of younger, healthier members to offset the costs of their older members. Australian Prudential Regulation Authority figures ­released yesterday showed there were 4,371,127 members under 35 at the end of last year, compared with 4,475,550 the year before and 4,550,933 in 2016.

The decline in overall hospital coverage continued in the March quarter this year, when it was the lowest rate since September 2012. Last year, apart from people in their 90s, the biggest decline in membership was 6.94 per cent for the 25-29 age group. That is despite the threat of Lifetime Health Cover loadings, which force people to pay premium loadings for every year they delay taking out insurance after turning 30.

Read The Australian article