Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026
Ms TRISH COOK (Bullwinkel) (18:12): I rise today to speak on a bill that is fundamentally about fairness, transparency and the restoration of trust in our healthcare system: the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. For too many Australians, a visit to the specialist is preceded by a calculation of fear, not just for their health but of the fees that they cannot predict.
This bill delivers on the Albanese Labor government's rock-solid commitment to strengthening Medicare. To summarise briefly, this bill fixes two things. It increases transparency in our healthcare system and outlaws product phoenixing, which is a deceptive practice where an insurer closes an existing product only to open another one immediately which is identical except for a higher premium.
This is done by insurers specifically to bypass ministerial scrutiny. We are ensuring that when Australians need medical advice they have the power to find the best value and when they pay their private health premiums they have the confidence that they are not being played for fools by corporate loopholes. This contrasts with the rhetoric that we've heard from the shadow treasurer, the member for Goldstein.
While we are here trying to lower out-of-pocket costs, he's been in this chamber describing our health investments as debt petrol on an inflation fire. He claims to care about cost of living, yet he stands with a party that presided over a decade of Medicare neglect. He calls our targeted cost-saving measures 'wasteful spending' but ignores the waste created by a system that leaves patients in the dark.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics confirms that medical and hospital services are the primary drivers of inflation for consumers. We see fees for the very same procedure vary wildly and sometimes by thousands of dollars, and that's between specialists within the same cities. This is called the cost lottery.
This bill fixes the failed attempts of the past. The previous government spent a whopping $24 million on the Medical Costs Finder website. That was a ghost town.
It relied on doctors voluntarily uploading their fees. Out of 11,000 specialists, how many signed up? Seven.
Seven individual doctors. This failure isn't a surprise when you look at the ideology of the man who now holds the coalition's purse strings. The shadow treasurer has previously advocated for the transfer of health financing from government to individuals.
He suggested that every Australian should have an individual health account to pay for their own care. That's not a healthcare system; that's an invoice system. It's an American-style version where your health is determined by your bank balance.
It's no wonder they couldn't get a transparency tool to work. They don't want you to see the bill until it's too late to pay it. Our amendments on this bill will allow the Medical Costs Finder to publish data drawn directly from Medicare, hospitals and insurance billing data.
We are shining a light into the black box of medical pricing because informed patients make for a healthier Australia. I speak on this not just as the member for Bullwinkel but as a nurse who has spent decades on the front line. I have stood in clinics from the Perth foothills and the Perth Hills to the Kimberley and the Pilbara, and I have seen and experienced the referral barrier first-hand.
As nurses, our role is to advocate for the patient, but it is heartbreakingly difficult to advocate for a patient's health when they are terrified of the cost. I have seen patients walk out of a specialist referral holding a piece of paper that looks like they've received a debt notice rather than a lifeline. When a patient doctor-shops or delays a procedure because they can't get a straight answer on out-of-pocket costs, their condition can worsen.
As a nurse, I know that delayed care is denied care. By automating the Medical Costs Finder system, we are removing the financial triage that patients are currently forced to perform. We are ensuring that the clinical pathway isn't blocked by a lack of data.
This bill allows the healthcare team, the GPs, the nurses and the patients to focus on the recovery and not the invoice. But transparency about fees is only half the battle. We must also address the transparency of the insurers.
There is this deceptive practice that I mentioned earlier known as product phoenixing. This occurs when an insurer closes an existing product only to immediately open an identical one at a higher premium rate specifically to bypass ministerial scrutiny. Currently, insurers may seek approval to raise premiums on existing products, but, by killing off the old product and birthing a new one, they avoid this law.
This bill slams that loophole shut. We are requiring approval for any proposed new product and any change that reduces value. Just last month, the shadow treasurer was out there decrying the 4.41 per cent premium increase, an increase that was necessary partly because his party had left the private hospital system on the brink of collapse.
He talked about inflation clangers, but where was his voice when insurance were using phoenixing to hike prices without any oversight? He wants deregulation; this bill offers protection. He wants the market to rip; we want the family budget to rest.
Some on the opposition side might call ministerial oversight 'red tape', but, as a nurse, I call it patient safety. In a hospital, we have protocols to ensure transparency and accountability. Why should the insurance market be any different?
Let's be clear about how the bait and switch of product phoenixing works. An insurer would see a product that was perhaps too good for the consumer. Maybe it had low gaps or high coverage.
To raise the price, they would have to justify that to the minister and, to avoid that, they would simply sunset the product. They'd send a letter to my constituents in High Wycombe or Mundaring and say: 'Your plan is retiring. Here are your new options.' And, like a phoenix rises from the ashes, a new plan, extremely similar to the previous one, appears.
It looks the same and it smells the same, but it costs 10 per cent more. Because it's new, it bypasses the minister's desk. That's unfair.
This bill ensures that the Minister for Health and Ageing, not a corporate board in an offshore office, is the final gatekeeper for the value of Australians' policies. We are bringing the same level of clinical accountability we expect in our hospital wards to the boardrooms of insurers. The member for Goldstein recently claimed in this House that he doesn't want to privatise Medicare, but his records and his writings tell a different story.
He has spent his career arguing against a 'nanny state', which in his vocabulary seems to include the basic safety net that keeps Australians alive and healthy. When the shadow treasurer talks about ambition, he means the ambition for individuals to shoulder the burden for a failing system. When we talk about ambition, we mean the ambition of a government that uses its power to protect its citizens from predatory pricing.
The coalition's view on Medicare is out of step with Australian values. They see Medicare as a line to be cut in the budget, and we see it as promises to be kept. They want to protect the flexibility of insurers to hike prices; we want to protect the flexibility of families to pay their rent.
In conclusion, this bill is a clear-eyed response to the cost-of-living pressures that are facing Australians. It empowers patients with data on specialist fees, protects consumers from corporate trickery and reinforces our longstanding commitment to a Medicare system that is strong and fair. I commend the bill to the House.