Matthew Donnellan, managing director of a medical mobile phone app called Whitecoat, has a message for people angry that their private health insurance fund is making them pay high out-of-pocket costs: Get used to it and go online.

Donnellan says up to 85 per cent of people do not even ask how much they will pay out-of-pocket for surgery until they are admitted as inpatients. By the time they are in hospital for a shoulder reconstruction or retinal surgery it is too late to start haggling over the bill.