Labor's commitment to upgrade the Medical Costs Finder website will require close collaboration with the medical profession.
Labor has vowed to upgrade the Medical Costs Finder website if it wins the upcoming federal election.
The $7 million upgrade will involve using Medicare data to "display the average cost of common specialist consultations and services, alongside the fees that individual doctors voluntarily shared to the website".
Crucially, this commitment also includes placing a strong obligation on private health insurers to reveal data showing how much they contribute to the cost of care and how often patients pay out-of-pocket costs for services that are not fully covered by their insurance policy.
We responded via a media release , stressing the importance of close collaboration with the medical profession to ensure the site focuses on key elements of informed financial consent and promoting financial health literacy. The AMA is already in discussions about how to achieve this with Health Minister Mark Butler's office and the Department of Health and Aged Care.
"The AMA has long advocated for greater transparency for patients when it comes to medical costs, which is why we have published a detailed Informed Financial Consent guide - a document that empowers patients to discuss costs with their doctor before undergoing medical procedures," AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen said.
Just three insurers so far have elected to upload their data on the Medical Costs Finder website, and this lack of information has been a major challenge to medical practitioner uptake of the website.
"The rebates patients receive are hidden on individual insurer websites, but we think they should be plainly available to consumers when they visit the Medical Costs Finder website to see which insurer provides the best value for the procedure," Dr McMullen said.
Doctors and patients have had to grapple with a years-long Medicare freeze, followed by inadequate indexation and no announcements or significant investments to specialist rebates by successive governments. Upgrades to the Medical Costs Finder alone will do little to prevent out-of-pocket costs, which are a result of systemic issues, including years of chronic underfunding and the obfuscation of rebates by private health insurers.
AMA Vice President Dr Julian Rait told 7News this week: "We'd like to see some readjustment of the private health insurance rebates, which are also paid to doctors and have not kept pace with inflation."
