When Medicare was properly introduced into Australia in 1984, it provided universal healthcare for everyone for the first time in country's history.

But it seems like there are some people in the Land Down Under who are keen to see it thrown in the trash and make everyone pay for private health insurance.

The managing director of NIB, which is one of Australia's largest private health insurers, has revealed his wish to get rid of Medicare in order to allow the 'private sector to flourish'.

Credit: Channel 9

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Mark Fitzgibbon told the Australian Financial Review: "[A] sensible policy approach would be to make private health insurance compulsory for all Australians with taxation devoted to subsidising the premiums for those who would otherwise be left behind.

"That is, high-income earners would at one end of the scale pay the entire premium while at the other, those with low income fully subsidised.

In a separate AFR interview, Mr Fitzgibbon complained that the current model we have in Australia has resulted in the government having a monopoly on the health care system.

"I don't know why health insurance is any more life-and-death than the food we eat and the homes we live in, and we don't make that a government monopoly," he said.

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Credit: Channel 9

"In this [proposal] people still get healthcare, it's just that rather than doing it through a social, government-run insurance system, they do it through a private system. So healthcare doesn't disappear."

Unsurprisingly, people on social media have condemned the suggestion.

"Get f**ked you soulless goblin," wrote one person.

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"We'd turn out in the streets in our millions if they even dared" said the Australian Unions.

Credit: Channel 9

Another person added: "Yeah great f**king idea. Wouldn't cover my heart surgery because cardiac was no longer on my policy. Been paying for private health since I was 18. At 42 got the surgery done in a public hospital thank f**k."

The suggestion has come a couple days after a think tank revealed the private health insurance industry was in a 'death spiral'.

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That was based off figures that showed the number of people aged 20-29 signing up for private health insurance had dropped 8 percent between 2016 and 2018.

But Mr Fitzgibbon says if this trend continues then Medicare costs will go up, costing the government more, which will then be eventually passed on to taxpayers.