Private health insurers deny that they caved in to public pressure from hospital operator Healthscope to give it more money, accusing the private equity-owned group of launching an “unethical” advertising campaign that had been a “dismal failure”.

Medibank Private, NIB and HCF have agreed to out-of-cycle funding payments in the “tens of millions of dollars” in the past three weeks following intense lobbying from debt-laden Healthscope, which owns 38 private hospitals.