In a recent commentary published in Health Voices, Dr Terence Cheng, Senior Lecturer of the School of Economics at University of Adelaide, takes a closer look at the recent apparent phenomenon of policy downgrades for private health insurance. Dr Cheng examines changes in spending on private health insurance premiums based on data collected in the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. The potential impacts of policy downgrades on the private health insurance market and public hospitals are briefly considered. He notes that the impacts are not necessarily negative “if downgrades are a result of consumers re-evaluating and ‘optimising’  their private health cover”. The full article can be read here.