Govt hypocritical: Labor

The federal opposition today accused the government of hypocrisy following an admission private health premiums were set to rise.

Earlier today Health Minister Kay Patterson said private health funds would win approval for premium price hikes.

However, in a signal Australia's largest private health insurer Medibank Private will not be granted a massive 13 per cent rise, she promised the increases would be kept as low as possible.

But Labor health spokesman Stephen Smith said the government had broken a preelection promise that private health insurance premiums would likely fall.

"The government boasted about the fact that there'd be no health insurance premium increases," Mr Smith said.

"We now see, in the face of applications for 13 per cent and 15 per cent increases, Health Minister Patterson saying there will be increases."

Mr Smith said news reports revealed health funds had also approached the government last year for increase approval, but had been told to shelve their requests until after the election.

"What a difference an election makes," he said.

"Families under pressure led down the garden path by this government in the course of an election campaign and an election year, and now they're about to be slugged."

Mr Smith said Labor would consider the applications on merit, but the ALP had not boasted premiums would remain flat or even decline.

He also said Labor had placed everything up for review as part of a wider policy shakeup, including whether the government's 30 per cent private health rebate should be scrapped.

It would also consider cutting the rebate back to include only basic levels of private cover.

"Those suggestions will no doubt be put to us in the course of that review and we'll consider those, as we will consider suggestions that the rebate be retained in its entirety or abolished," he said.

"But the point I've made consistently is this, you've got to now consider the rebate as very much a measure that goes to the budgets of Australian families under financial pressure, and that's the context or the prism in which I view it."

AAP