More Australian than hot summers and bagging cricket selectors is the habit of criticising the Big Four banks' "outrageous" profits.

Forget the banks, they're relative amateurs. If you want outrage, check out the private health insurance rip-off as demonstrated by NIB and Medibank.

Little NIB was one of this reporting season's star turns, the market applauding the 65 per cent surge in its first-half net profit to $71 million, and its chief executive afforded a lap of honour in the AFR, where he called for his industry to return to the good old days before Whitlam introduced Medicare, when 70 per cent of the population bought health insurance instead of the present 46-point-something per cent.

That's the private health insurance industry that is one of Australian capitalism's more galling sheltered workshops, where the government uses both sticks and carrots to push customers through insurers' doors and rubber stamps annual premium increases that are multiples of the inflation rate.