The Private Health Insurance premium increase 2026

Even with the rate rise, private health insurance remains as valuable as ever, with benefits including:

• Avoiding public hospital waiting lists for elective surgeries
• Your choice of doctor if available
• Great-value extras.

Plus, you’ll have peace of mind that if something goes wrong for you or your family, you’ll be well-positioned to get the health care you need as fast as possible.

You should regularly review your policy and compare options to make sure it’s a good fit for your personal needs and circumstances.

You’ll be notified of your private health insurance premium increase by your health fund via post or email. This way, you can check over any updated policy information and make an informed decision about what to do next. While funds traditionally increase their premiums on 1 April each year, some funds delayed their rate rise until later in the year during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Though the industry average rate rise is 4.41%, your specific policy may have a higher or lower increase.

This graph shows the premium increase each year for the last decade:

Over the last decade, the overall industry average for health insurance premiums has risen each year. This means the average for premiums has gone up nearly 35% from ten years ago. Usually, premiums will increase on 1 April each year. There are a variety of reasons for premiums increasing, including:

• Rising treatment costs
• Australia’s aging population
• Increase in complex surgeries
• Increases in doctor/specialist fees
• Wage increase for health workers
• Higher costs for medical technology

Before health funds can raise their premiums, they must submit their proposed price increases to the Australian Government and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) for approval. The federal government checks all submissions to ensure they’re sustainable, fair and necessary.

Some factors that lead to rate rises include:

• Increased health care costs (including doctors’ and hospital charges)
• An increase in the cost of medical equipment and changing technology
• The growing number of complex and expensive procedures available in private hospitals
• The rate of private health insurance claims.

As the health insurance premium rate rise is a weighted average, some health funds increase their prices more than others.

This weighted average is based on changes to a health fund’s entire portfolio of policies; this means the cost of some policies may increase substantially, some may increase slightly, some may not increase at all, and some could even decrease.

These proposed changes are reviewed, and if the insurer can’t sufficiently justify why they need to increase their premiums, the proposal will be rejected.

Below is the average rate rise for each health fund in 2026. Keep in mind this is the average increase across all policies offered by the health fund; not all policies will be increased by this amount, if at all.