Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australians take out private health insurance for one main reason: peace of mind—the reassurance that, if something goes wrong, they are covered. But peace of mind requires information, and right now that is difficult for consumers to come by. You can hold a private health insurance policy, you can pay your premiums faithfully, and you can be referred to a specialist yet still have no reliable way of knowing what an appointment is going to cost you until that bill arrives. That is not peace of mind, and it's not good enough. The Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026 is about fixing that information gap, because Australians shouldn't have to take a financial leap of faith when it comes to specialist health care.

This bill delivers on the Albanese Labor government's commitment to strengthen Medicare. We created Medicare over 40 years ago, and we do not let it sit idle. Because we care about Medicare, we invest in it. We make it bigger, we make it better, we make it stronger. Whether it's by creating more bulk-billing, whether it's by creating new Urgent Care Clinics, whether it's by investing in Medicare mental health clinics or whether it's by making the biggest investment into women's health in history, this bill goes to those same principles.

This bill helps Australians find the best value when they need specialist medical advice and treatment, and provides more confidence in their private health insurance by outlawing product phoenixing. Specialist fees in Australia can vary enormously, even for the same procedure in the same part of Australia. According to the ABS, the cost of medical and hospital services is a key driver of health inflation for consumers, which feeds into higher out-of-pocket costs and higher private health insurance premiums.

As the Minister for Health and Ageing outlined recently, a growing number of Australians are choosing not to follow through on GP referrals to medical specialists. This is because the cost is a major barrier. During 2024-25, an estimated 8.6 per cent of people—that's more than 800,000 Australians—delayed or entirely skipped specialist appointments because they could not afford them. Right now, if you need to see a specialist, it can be difficult to find out what you'll be charged before you walk in the door. It can also be difficult to compare these costs against the fees charged by other specialists.

The Medical Costs Finder website exists to help with this, but it has been limited in what it can tell you. Participation in the Medical Costs Finder has been extremely low. Only one to two per cent of specialists and 10 per cent of insurers opted to publish their fees and out-of-pocket costs information. The proposed legislative amendments will allow the Medical Costs Finder website to publish individual medical practitioner fees and insurer out-of-pocket data for common medical services.

It's about taking what we know and making sure that it's transparent to people who need that information. Medical practitioners will no longer need to upload their billing information, as it will be drawn from Medicare and hospitals and insurer billing data already collected by government. This is a smart and practical reform; the data already exists, and the government already collects it. We are simply making it visible to the people it affects the most—to patients, to Australians.

This bill will ensure Australian patients have the power to compare costs and make informed choices about their own medical care, while not imposing any administrative burden on doctors. Specifically, the bill will amend the Health Insurance Act and the Private Health Insurance Act to allow for the publication of information about medical practitioners, including their names, their locations, their fees charged by location and their use of gap cover arrangements with insurers. It will also allow for publication of information about hospitals and insurers, including gap cover and contracting arrangements, and the proportion of policyholders experiencing various out-of-pocket costs. Consumer peak bodies and insurer bodies are highly supportive, given the growth in specialist fees and out-of-pocket costs and the rising costs of living.

This is unsurprising, because people deserve to be able to make those informed decisions about their health care, and they need it more than ever. This government understands that cost of living is the No. 1 thing on families' minds and on Australians' minds. To protect all parties, the bill also includes an immunity from civil proceedings for the publication of this information and modernises the secrecy regime to make it consistent with amendments made by the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Act.

The second major component of this bill addresses something that has eroded consumer confidence in private health insurance, and that's product phoenixing. Product phoenixing is where an insurer closes an existing product then opens an identical or similar new product at a higher premium. And why would someone do that? Well, they do it to pull the wool over consumers' eyes.

This is a government that knows that, when times are tough, our job is to protect Australians and to make sure that their money is safe and their health is looked after. Yes—under existing arrangements, your private health insurer can close your product, open a new one that is functionally identical and charge you more for it, all without the Minister for Health and Ageing scrutinising that premium increase.

Phoenixing doesn't just disadvantage people who are signing up to private health insurance for the first time and feel the consequences immediately; it is also detrimental to the wider community of 15.3 million Australians who already hold health cover. These existing members are left vulnerable because changes to products, pricing or fund behaviour often escape proper scrutiny. As a result, longstanding policyholders can face unexpected shifts in what their insurance covers, how much they pay or how secure their policy is over time.

When these kinds of changes are happening—when things are being deliberately done to Australians to pull the wool over their eyes, and all they want to do is focus on their health, their recovery and their treatment—we need someone to step in, and that's what this bill does. In this way, this cynical practice undermines consumer confidence in the entire system, creating uncertainty not only for those newcomers but for everyone who relies on private health insurance to protect their wellbeing. It's been a loophole, and it has been exploited.

Currently, private health insurers are required to apply to the Minister for Health and Ageing if they wish to change the premium for an existing product. This bill amends the Private Health Insurance Act to require an insurer to seek ministerial approval for the premium charged for a proposed new product and for changes that reduce cover, reduce a benefit or change a term or condition of an existing product. This closes that loophole. It means that, if an insurer wants to launch what is essentially the same product at a higher price or quietly reduce the value of a product you hold, they need ministerial sign-off. They need to stump up what they're doing. And that is proper accountability.

The bill also makes important modernisation changes to the premium approvals process more broadly. It introduces an approved application period that gives legislative backing to the existing premium round, which has operated administratively for many years. It applies a public interest test to applications within this period, with a more stringent test for out-of-cycle applications. The minister will be able to delegate the power to approve a premium application, but not the power to refuse one. That is an important safeguard. The bill provides legislative backing for existing processes, including the ability to request further information or ask an insurer to resubmit their application. These are sensible, proportionate reforms that give consumers greater confidence that those premiums that they are being charged reflect genuine value.

The shadow Treasurer thinks he knows what's wrong with our health system. Just before taking on his role, he told the parliament it was 'a system designed to keep people ill' for Labor's political benefit. But, unlike those opposite, this Albanese Labor government came into office with a commitment to strengthen our healthcare system, not talk it down—and not talk Australia down—but strengthen and build our health system, which is one that is the envy of so many the world over.

We have not stopped delivering on that promise, on that commitment. We have made the biggest investment in Medicare since its inception. We've backed bulk-billing in. In my electorate, what that means is that we've got 11 practices that were formerly mixed-billing and are now fully bulk-billing, with nine out of 10 GP visits to be bulk-billed by 2030. We've rolled out urgent care clinics so that Australians can get care without sitting in an emergency department, and 80 per cent of Australians will soon live within a 20-minute drive of one of those fully bulk-billed clinics. I've got two pretty close to me: one at the bottom of Canossa and one at the bottom of the PA.

We've reduced the cost of PBS prescriptions and invested in women's health, aged-care wages and the health workforce of the future. I was at a pharmacy in Corinda the other day. When I spoke to the pharmacist about the impact of $25 PBS medicines, she said that people were taking their medicine, particularly those with chronic disease. People who might not have made that choice previously because of price were now doing that. So these investments in health care impact real people and they help people in our communities.

If the shadow Treasurer would like to join us in strengthening Medicare, we would welcome him to work with us. But his record tells an incredibly different story. In 2011, he told the Sydney Morning Herald that delivering sustainable health services requires a free-market approach. We know what that means. I'm a Queenslander; I know what that means. It means privatisation, and it means cuts again and again. That is what we see from this opposition. Those are the shadow Treasurer's words. We believe that health care should be for everyone, not be in the hands of a privatised few.

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