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For the 11 million Australians with private hospital cover, premium rises are nothing new. The 3.95% average increase on April 1, 2018 will be the seventeenth consecutive year in which insurance premiums have been hiked up. Health insurance premiums have increased by an average of 5.35% per year since 2000, which is significantly more than wage growth, meaning that households are spending a larger share of their income on health care.

Interesting look at data around private healthcare and marketisation. Each year, for well over a decade, more people have faced higher health insurance deductibles. The theory goes like this: The more of your own money that you have to spend on health care, the more careful you will be - buying only necessary care, purging waste from the system. But that theory doesn't fully mesh with reality: High deductibles aren't working as intended. A body of research - including randomized studies - shows that people do in fact cut back on care when they have to spend more for it. The problem is that they don't cut only wasteful care. They also forgo the necessary kind. This, too, is well documented, including with randomized studies. People don't know what care they need, which is why they consult doctors.

What is the basis for the argument that poor Americans will be healthier if they are required to pay substantially more for health care? It appears that proponents like Ms. Verma have looked at research and concluded that having Medicaid is often no better than being uninsured - and thus that any private insurance, even with enormous deductibles, must be better. But our examination of research in this field suggests this kind of thinking is based on a classic misunderstanding: confusing correlation for causation.