Noel Whittaker's latest column looks at a change that would quietly raise the cost of private health cover for older Australians.
If you're in your fifties, private health insurance is already one of the bigger household bills — and you may have assumed it eases a little once you turn 65. Writing in The Canberra Times, Noel Whittaker explains why that assumption is now in question.
Since 2005, older Australians have received a larger rebate on their premiums. The rebate started at 30 per cent under the Howard government in 1999, then rose to 35 per cent for people aged 65 to 69 and 40 per cent for those aged 70 and over. Successive governments trimmed those rates and added income testing, and the government now wants to scrap the age-based top-ups altogether from 1 April 2027. The base rebate stays, as does income testing — the rebate still cuts out entirely above $164,000 for singles and $328,000 for couples. The saving is put at about $3 billion over four years.
Noel's objection is less about the dollars than the timing. People who have paid premiums for thirty or forty years would face a rule change at the stage of life when they are most likely to claim. And 1 April is the day insurers traditionally lift premiums, so the two would land together.
Research by National Seniors Australia suggests around 15 per cent of older policyholders would likely drop their cover and another 16 per cent would downgrade — on a population basis, hundreds of thousands of people. The risk in downgrading is what quietly disappears: hospital cover can stop including hip and knee replacements, and trimming extras means losing dental, optical and physiotherapy benefits.
None of this is law yet. The Coalition and the Greens both oppose the bill, and a Senate motion to strike it out has already been moved. The useful step for now is simply to know what your own policy actually covers, so that if premiums and rebates do move together in 2027 you are deciding with your eyes open rather than reacting to a renewal notice.
"Older Australians could therefore face a double blow: higher premiums and a reduced rebate on the same day."
Read the full article: There's something fundamentally unfair about changing the rules in this way — Noel Whittaker, The Canberra Times, 2 November 2026.
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