By Clare Mullen, Executive Director
Today – 17 March 2025 – the Federal Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler – is speaking to a range of media outlets about his announcement that, if re-elected, a Federal Labor Government will be publishing the costs of specialist medical fees on the Government’s Medical Costs Finder website.
But wait – isn’t that the website that was set up in 2019 to do exactly that? Well, yes. But it wasn’t mandatory for doctors to add their information. And so only 70 of them did. Out of approximately 11,000 specialists in Australia.
As I highlighted in this blog article last May, it’s important that consumers – in this case patients – have access to cost information in order to make their decision about where to get specialist treatment.
Health Consumers’ Council WA represents the interest of consumers, and WA consumers particularly, on the Federal Government’s Out of Pocket Costs Transparency Reference Group. Through that group, we advocated that any health service provider that receives public funding should be required to publish their pricing information on the Medical Costs Finder website.
We hope that whoever is in Government after the next election will follow through on this commitment to patient and consumer power and ensure people can make informed decisions about specialist healthcare.
Opinion: It’s time for full transparency on who’s making money out of our healthcare