PRIVATE health insurers are on the nose - despite the field in which they operate, healthcare professions, consistently ranking as the most respected in Australia.
According to research from Roy Morgan, distrust has emerged as a critical issue as Australians feel the pinch of another unpopular increase in premiums.
The new survey found private health insurance is more distrusted than trusted by Australians.
In a Net Trust Score (NTS) survey conducted by the Roy Morgan Research Institute between October 2017 and February 2018, the health insurance industry recorded a negative net score of -2.6 per cent (trust score 1.3 per cent, distrust score 3.9 per cent). This score puts the industry lower than retail and travel.
"There is no doubt that when a patient has to pay an unexpected gap at a doctor's surgery or hospital they do not blame the health professionals, they blame their private health fund," said Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine.
"The private health insurance industry is inherently anchored on trust. It is a core component of the customer-insurer partnership.
"The customer places their trust in the insurer. Should they need to make a claim, they trust the insurer to fulfil its policy obligations. So this level of industry distrust should be of concern to the funds.
"In the current market in which private health insurance premiums continue to rise, it is a matter of survival that funds maintain high levels of net trust."
The Roy Morgan Private Health Insurance Tracker survey reveals that while the most trusted funds are BUPA and Medibank Private, they are also the most distrusted, with BUPA being more distrusted than it is trusted.
"When we subtract distrust from trust, we discover that the private health insurance funds with the highest net trust scores are HCF followed by Teachers Health and Medibank Private," Ms Levine said.
"There is only one fund in negative NTS territory, and that is BUPA. However, our survey was conducted during the week that saw so much negative media coverage of BUPA's plans to reduce some benefits, so that result is unremarkable.
"Indeed, the earlier research across all industries showed that prior to March, BUPA was in marginally positive NTS territory.
"Taken together, what these results show is that distrust is very volatile, and given that distrust drives behaviour (like switching from one fund to another), this is significant and needs to be tracked over time."
