Out of pocket medical fees
KIM LANDERS: The Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has committed to working with doctors and surgeons to try to tackle the problem of so-called ‘bill shock’; that's when private health insurance patients are slugged with unexpectedly high out-of-pocket expenses. Stephen Smiley reports.
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REPORTER: It's a problem many Australians will be familiar with, so-called bill shock; when a medical appointment or procedure comes with unexpected out-of-pocket fees. But the Australian Medical Association's President, Dr Michael Gannon, insists it's not actually that common.
MICHAEL GANNON: Eighty-six per cent of times people see a GP they know the fee and they know it's zero dollars when they're bulk billed.
REPORTER: Nevertheless, the issue of bill shock prompted the Senate's Community Affairs References Committee last month to call for the Government to compel doctors to publish a searchable database of their fees.
The Health Minister Greg Hunt says he's now looking at the best way to make out-of-pocket fees information more transparent.
Dr Gannon says that's easier said than done.
MICHAEL GANNON: If we look at the MBS, for the average specialty there could easily be 300 different items. There's between 15 and 20 different private health insurance companies and they have a bewildering array of products.
REPORTER: And Dr Gannon says even compelling doctors to publish details of the gap on their three or four most commonly performed procedures would be difficult.
MICHAEL GANNON: If the insurers have 15 different products and there's 15 different insurers, even that small number of doctors that only use one item for a majority of their workload would have to put 200 different numbers on a website.
REPORTER: And that would be because different health plans would be offering different rates of coverage and so if you were going to publish - to take that example - the three most common procedures, you'd have to go through every different plan and what it would be covered on.
MICHAEL GANNON: That's exactly right. We've even got the situation where insurers not only for the same operation will give doctors a different amount of money if they agree to participate in one of their ‘no gap’ schemes. That amount actually varies from State to State.
REPORTER: In a statement, Greg Hunt says his private health insurance reform package includes a new committee that will look into the issue. He says he's committed to helping Australians better understand the out-of-pocket costs charged by doctors.
KIM LANDERS: Stephen Smiley reporting.