Background

The Australian federal government introduced the pri-vate health insurance incentive policy reforms in 1997– 2000 to encourage the uptake of private health insurance and increase the availability of beds in public hospitals [1,2]. From 1984, Australian residents had been able to access free treatment in public hospitals covered by na-tional health insurance (public patients) and as a result, private health insurance membership among the Australian population began to decline [3]. These policy reforms were introduced as a response to this declining trend so that more patients would choose to be treated as private patients in either private or public hospitals at a subsidised cost through private health insurance [4,5]. The policy reforms were efficient in increasing private health insurance uptake, demonstrated by a rise in th