A survey aimed at gauging the nation’s views on private health insurance has flagged charging different premiums based on age, gender and lifestyle factors, as well as differentiating between smokers and non-smokers.

AMA Tasmania president Tim Greenaway said charging people who smoke more for private insurance fitted with user-pays principles.

‘‘Patients who smoke have higher health costs than those that don’t,’’ Associate Professor Greenaway said.

‘‘The risk, of course, is that we’re poorer, have higher smoking rates and higher obesity rates, and the risk is people dropping their private health cover and instead relying on the public system.’’

Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley launched the online survey on Sunday to ask consumers how the system could better deliver value for money.

The consultation follows the initiation of a review into the $19billion private health insurance sector in October.

‘‘It’s important we’re able to ask consumers what they expect from their private health insurance, and there’s plenty of room to do that without moving towards US or UK models that exclude sick people and make it only available to the rich, which we don’t support,’’ Ms Ley said.

‘‘This government is committed to recalibrating the private health system so that value for money for consumers returns to being its core focus, and we’re interested in the views of everyday Australians on how best to do that.’’

About 40per cent of Tasmanians have private health insurance, but Associate Professor Greenaway said many people were not aware of the extent of their cover.

‘‘There are a number of junk policies and people aren’t aware of their cover,’’ he said.

The national survey is available online at health.gov.au/PHIconsultations2015-16.