Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026

Senator BLYTH (South Australia) (19:57): I rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. Let me say at the outset that the coalition supports transparency in health care. We support it because we believe in it and because we built the very tool this bill seeks to expand.

It was the coalition that established the Medical Costs Finder back in 2019 so that Australians could go online and get a sense of what they might pay before they ever walked into a specialist's rooms. So, when the government says it wants more transparency for patients, it will find no argument from us on the principle. The coalition will not oppose this bill.

But supporting transparency in principle is not the same as accepting that this bill as drafted gets it right, because it does not, and we are not alone in saying so. The committee heard it, the scrutiny of bills committee flagged it and stakeholders have raised it. Let us be clear about why this matters to ordinary Australians.

Out-of-pocket costs in this country have reached record highs. For a visit to a medical specialist, just 28 per cent of services are bulk-billed and the average out-of-pocket cost is now more than $123. For anaesthetics, fewer than nine per cent are bulk-billed, and the average gap is almost $245.

And it gets worse. Research by Redbridge found that around 30 per cent of Australians referred to a specialist over the past three years did not go. They didn't go, because they were worried about what it would cost them.

Think about that—almost a third of people told by their own GP that they needed to see a specialist decided they couldn't afford to find out what was wrong with them. That is the human cost of a system where prices are hidden and costs keep climbing. Debate interrupted.