Canberra Private Hospital is just the latest in a string of more than 20 hospital closures around the country. Patients are paying a heavy toll, and healthcare professionals are counting the human and financial costs.

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It has been more than two years since the federal government led its first of two talkfests to find solutions to the viability crises forcing private hospitals to close while others have cancelled more than 80 services, notably mental health and maternity units.

It has been 18 months since the government pledged a six-month timeline for "immediate solutions" to what it agrees are the mental health, maternity and regional hospital crises. That deadline lapsed a year ago.

It has been 15 months since federal Health Minister Mark Butler publicly rebuked health insurers' record profits, high management fees and poor payouts, demanding they increase payment ratios to private hospitals or he would force them to do so.

Despite conceding insurers are still coming up short, the government is yet to act.

It's time the Albanese government did what it said it would do. Rhetoric must give way to putting out the flames that are reducing Australia's once renowned public-private hospital system to ashes.

It starts with bringing the health insurance industry into line. The insurers are racking up record annual after-tax profits of more than $2 billion and so-called "management expenses" of $3.4 billion each year, all from the premiums Aussies pay.

The premise for higher premiums is meeting higher healthcare costs, right? Wrong.

There is no legislative or regulatory........

© Canberra Times