Specialists charging patients too much should be named, shamed and stripped of federal funding. That's according to a Grattan report, which has found more than 20 per cent of patients have been charged an excessive fee.
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00:00This report paints a very bleak picture of specialist care in Australia, where people
00:06are facing unnecessary illness and pain as they wait for care or struggle to pay for
00:12it.
00:13This Grattan Institute report found more than one in five Australians in 2023 would
00:17charge the specialist fee deemed extreme, which was defined as, on average, more than
00:22three times the Medicare schedule fee.
00:25It makes a raft of recommendations, including bolstering the specialist workforce.
00:29It paints this issue as one of market power, where specialists are free to charge whatever
00:34fees they'd like because there's limited numbers of specialists and people don't have
00:38the option necessarily to go elsewhere.
00:41It also calls for more funding for those public clinics so that people will be able to access
00:46timely and affordable care.
00:48And a really interesting recommendation is to name and shame specialists who are charging
00:53too much and strip them of federal funding.
00:56Take a listen to the Grattan's health program director, Peter Braden, earlier.
01:00Well, our feeling is government has to act because fees overall have risen by 73% since
01:062010.
01:07That's on top of all the inflation costs that people have been struggling with.
01:11And these extreme fees have been rising as well.
01:14So we think at least by telling patients before they turn up, this is an extreme fee charging
01:19specialist and then saying the government really shouldn't be subsidising care that is well
01:24out of reach of most people and for which there's no justification for such extreme high fees.
01:29And Steph, what have been some of the reactions to the report?
01:33Well, the president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Danielle McMullen, says this report
01:39highlights an urgent need for change.
01:41She agrees that the workforce needs to be bolstered.
01:44And she also argues that the Medicare rebate hasn't kept pace with the cost of providing
01:49care, meaning that patients are increasingly being left with out of pocket costs.
01:54Health Minister Mark Butler called on the private sector to do more to protect patients from
01:59exorbitant bills.
02:00And he also pointed to work that the government has done in terms of improving transparency
02:05with a price disclosure website.
02:07And also said that work is underway to bolster the specialist workforce.
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