Medical Costs Finder gets funding pledge after years of poor uptake
A re-elected Labor government will commit $7m to the flawed website Medical Costs Finder, a $24m venture supported by just 70 doctors.
Australians will be able to find accurate and transparent specialist prices under a $7m investment intended to create a fit-for-purpose online health costs tracker.
The website Medical Costs Finder was intended to provide information on the going rate for procedures and medical services, but was hamstrung by its voluntary opt-in system.
Established in 2019, the Health Department said that by the end of 2022 only seven of the 11,000 registered specialists nationwide had provided their fee information. This had risen to 70 doctors, or 0.63 per cent, by 2025. The small dataset leaves information skewed and incomplete, despite the reliance of more than one million users on the service and $24m in investments.
Health Minister Mark Butler will announce the review of Health Costs Finder as an election commitment in Perth on Monday. It will be costed for at the federal budget on March 25. The Australian Medical Association has pushed for doctors to volunteer their fees, and Labor signalled reform in November.
“The former government did nothing to make the Medical Costs Finder a useful tool for consumers,” Mr Butler said. “It’s a service that has been left gathering dust and doesn’t help patients determine specialist out-of-pocket costs.
“The Albanese Labor government will help Australians find the best value when they need specialist medical advice and treatment, by upgrading the Medical Costs Finder to give more transparency on fees.
“We are committed to working with consumers, the colleges and private health providers on the design and implementation of this important cost transparency measure.”
Price trackers are intended to aid against bill shock, where patients may avoid care out of fear of opaque prices, while also working as an accountability mechanism to prevent inflation on services, out-of-pocket costs and insurance premiums.
The new system is intended to sidestep the need for data of individual practitioners by using aggregated Medicare, hospital and insurer statistics – reducing the administrative burden on the medical workforce in the process.
Private health insurers will be mandated to provide details of their financial agreements with specialists. Currently only three insurers voluntarily supply such information, according to the Health Department.
The latest funding push will bring its total taxpayer cost from $2.5m in 2019 to $31.5m should Labor make it to a second term.
Questions in Senate estimates by independent David Pocock first revealed how few doctors had volunteered information to Medical Costs Finder. He welcomed the promise of reform.
“There is a genuine need for Australians to have better tools to compare medical costs so they can make informed decisions. Here in the ACT, we have some of the highest out of pocket costs for elective surgery in the country,” Senator Pocock said.
“Australians can’t shop around for a surgery if they can’t meaningfully compare the market, including how much a surgeon charges and how much their insurer will cover for each surgeon in the market. The current cost finder website has been a costly failure and so I welcome the government’s decision to review it.”
Private sector provider Zable Health sought to fill the gap with its own site last year. It also compiles out-of-pocket costs, wait times and specific expertise for medical specialities.
In June it found that while many of the fees charged by doctors are broadly similar within each specialty, there are some outliers that reveal patterns of price gouging by a small minority, likely related to trends such as telepsychiatry and expensive assessments for ADHD and autism.
The digital database showed that initial consultation fees for private psychiatry range from a median of $450 in Adelaide to a high of $600 in Perth, with a Medicare rebate of $247.25.
Mr Butler pledged to carry out a consultive process to finalise the new design and implementation of Medical Costs Finder.
Health prices can vary greatly by region. In Perth, cataract surgery costs $190 out of pocket on average, but can vary from less than $20 to more than $500 depending on providers.
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