Minister for Health and Aged Care, press conference – 17 March 2025

MEMBER FOR HASLUCK, TANIA LAWRENCE: Welcome out in Ellenbrook, one of the fastest growing suburbs in the Perth corridor in the eastern suburbs. This area has some fantastic medical facilities, and today we're in one of the bigger ones. I'm very thankful to Rebecca the Practice Manager, and also to Dr Maisie Maung for showing the Health Minister Mark Butler and myself through the centre. And just to really get a sense and appreciation of just the importance of health care in Ellenbrook and the surrounding precincts. We know that it's Labor that they can trust to be able to ensure that people have access to affordable health care. It's Labor that set up Medicare. It was the Liberals that tried to abolish. It is Labor that will protect people's rights and access to free and universal health care. And to that end, we've already opened so many Urgent Care Clinics around the country. I've been very lucky, I have one in Midland, which we strongly advocated for. They've seen over 12,000 people in just 12 months being able to access urgent care treatment, rather than having to go to the emergency department of a hospital. Over in Morley, where the clinic is open till 10pm, seven days a week, it means that people who maybe can't see their GP during working hours and urgently need a treatment bed for ear issues, or UTIs, or whatever might be needed, are able to get the treatment and access that they need, completely free, using only their Medicare card. This is the kind of care that Labor delivers. I'm really thankful that to be able to show Minister Butler today into this area of Perth, because this is where, if we are re-elected, we will have the opportunity again to open another Urgent Care Clinic, which is going to be greatly appreciated by the local community.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thanks so much Tania and to the practice managers and owners of this facility, Total Health at Ellenbrook, for hosting us today, to talk generally about our strengthening Medicare reforms, but particularly about the opportunity for a new Medicare Urgent Care Clinic here in the growth corridor around Ellenbrook.
 
Currently, there are eight Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in Western Australia, and they've already seen 150,000 patients through those clinics. They're open seven days a week for extended hours, and really importantly, they are fully bulk bill so all you need to take is your Medicare card and leave your credit card at home. Of those 150,000 patients, around 50,000 have been kids under the age of 15. They've got injured at Saturday afternoon sport or have fallen off their skateboard. And mum and dad have taken them there to the clinic instead, frankly, of having to take them to the hospital emergency department, where they would have ended up waiting for hours and hours and hours.
 
Now we have announced the Prime Minister and I that if we are re-elected, we will open another six Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in Western Australia, including one here in Ellenbrook, that will bring the network here in WA to about 14 clinics, and when fully operational, they will be able to see 200,000 Western Australian patients each and every year. Not only delivering them high quality urgent care in their own community but also taking much needed pressure off the crowded hospital emergency departments that we see right across the country, indeed, right across the world right now.
 
This is all part of our strengthening Medicare reforms; to boost bulk billing to deliver more doctors into the system, and now to open more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics as well. In addition to all of our strengthening Medicare reforms, we've been delivering wave after wave of cheaper medicines reforms as well, including the latest announcements we only made over the weekend to deliver a range of new medicines onto the PBS. Medicines that women have been using and paying top dollar for, for years now.
 
But I also want to talk today about a third area of cost pressure on Australian households, and that is: the bill shock that Australian patients are increasingly experiencing for private procedures. Very big out-of-pocket costs that they end up having to pay to their medical specialists, their surgeons, their anaesthetists for procedures like knee replacements, cataract replacements and the like. This is becoming a really serious issue for many millions of households. More than one in three Australian patients are telling us that they suffer from this bill shock. They end up having to pay out-of-pocket costs they weren't aware of, or if they were made aware of, it was only just before they went in to receive the procedure. Professor Allan Fels, when he did an inquiry into unfair pricing practices last year in the Australian economy, more broadly, pointed to this area as a particular problem for Australian consumers, in this case, Australian patients.
 
Today, I'm announcing that this government is determined to protect Australian patients from bill shock. The former government, in the dying days of their time in government, set up a website, ‘Medical Costs Finder’, at the cost of about $24 million to encourage medical specialists to upload their gap fees the page so patients could shop around and compare fees that were available in the market. Still, of the 11,000 medical specialists who are covered by that scheme, only 70 have uploaded their gap fees. The other whatever it is, 10,930 have chosen not to upload their fees, meaning patients have no real line of sight of what they end up having to pay for their private procedure. I’m announcing today that we will ensure that every single doctor's fees are uploaded to this website and able to be compared against a national average. We know that fees are very different across the country. In postcode, 2600 in the centre of Perth, for example, if you are having a knee replacement there, 10 per cent of patients will pay a gap fee of less than $60 but 10 per cent of patients will pay a gap fee of more than $2,800. If you're receiving a cataract surgery in that postcode in Perth, 10 per cent of patients will pay a gap fee of less than $20 but 10 per cent will pay a gap fee of more than $500. And because there's no transparency around these fees, currently, patients don't know which side of that ledger they're going to fall. Well under our government, they will know. They'll have full information about every doctor's average fees for every single procedure. They'll have full information on the website of every private health insurer’s payments. Of the 29 insurers, only three insurers so far have elected to upload their data to the website as well. This is another blow for transparency that we are striking on behalf of Australian patients, and another way in which we're seeking to protect Australian patients from bill shock in the Australian healthcare system. Happy to take questions.
 
JOURNALIST: How will you ensure doctors and insurance companies upload this information?
 
BUTLER: We've relied upon their good will to do that over the last few years. When we came to government, only seven specialists out of 11,000 had uploaded their gap fees. To his credit, the then AMA President, Steve Robson, tried to lead by example. He uploaded his fees - he’s an obstetrician - and encouraged members of the AMA to do likewise, but since then, only a few dozen have. Three years into this system, only 70 out of 11,000 have done so. I've now given up on the expectation that we can rely upon specialists to upload their own fees. We are now going to do it for them. We will upload the average fees for every single specialist, for every single procedure covered by this arrangement. We have access to that data. We can do it on their behalf, and I will now do that for every insurer and every single specialist. If you are about to get a knee replacement in Perth, for example, you will be able to go and find what ‘Dr Smith’ charges for a knee replacement and compare that to the national average fee.
 
JOURNALIST: Is that through Medicare data?
 
BUTLER: That’s through Medicare data. We have a line of sight about gap fees of individual specialists, hospitals and insurers pay, and obviously the insurers have to report that information as well. We have rich access to data. The former government set up a system that would rely upon the specialists doing that work for patients. They've not done that. We're going to step in and fill the gap.
 
JOURNALIST: Doctors might say, every patient is different and their needs are different. How accurate is this data for people?
 
BUTLER: This will be done by the diagnostic group. It will be done by the procedure, which is defined by the medical community itself. It will be as reliable a guide as you could possibly get to the sort of procedure-by-procedure comparison people want to make when they're considering taking a very obviously important step of agreeing to undertake a private procedure, but one that can end up costing them thousands and thousands of dollars as well.
 
JOURNALIST: And have you spoken to the AMA about this? What do they have to say?
 
BUTLER: Yes, we consulted the AMA over quite a period of time about the underperformance of this system. This is another Liberal digital disaster right up there with the COVID Safe App that cost $20 million and identified two COVID cases in its time, as well their woeful under performance in the My Health Record system. We've been talking with the AMA about how to fix this digital disaster the Liberal Party left us with. Ultimately, given that we gave specialists a chance to upload their data, they've chosen not to do that, and that's their right. But we're not just going to sit on our hands. We've decided we're going to take action and make sure patients have that information.
 
I've seen a media release by the AMA this morning since I made the announcement supporting the move. Obviously, they'll want to talk to us about the way in which we harvest the data and then publish it. I welcome that. We want to see them as a partner in doing this, but we can't continue with the status quo.
 
JOURNALIST: So how far off is this then, if those discussions are continuing with the AMA?
 
BUTLER: We'll have to legislate to do this. Some of this is similar to the steps I took to force pathology companies and diagnostic imaging companies to upload their results to My Health Record. Previously, it's been left up to their decision, which meant that millions and millions of scans and pathology tests simply weren't recorded anywhere. They were pretty useless to patients and the GPs that they often went back to talk about those results, so I legislated. We put legislation through the Parliament that will now force that to happen. We'll have to do that in relation to this as well, to give us the power to harvest this data and then publish it. And if we're re-elected, we'll introduce that legislation as soon as we can.
 
JOURNALIST: Prices change, how often would it be updated?
 
BUTLER: We'd like to see it updated on a quarterly basis. Again, the existing Medical Costs Finder that the Liberal Party left us with has relatively old data, 2022-23 financial year data. We know that gap fees by talking to patients, gap fees have been increasing pretty markedly over the last two or three years. I've said to the department, I want to see the most current data available to patients, and where I'm advised that that we're confident that as we develop this system, we’ll be able to update it on a three monthly basis.
 
JOURNALIST: Will this fix the rising costs of surgeries?
 
BUTLER: This will give patients transparency. This will give patients the clearest information they can get about what they're up for if they choose to have a particular private procedure undertaken by a particular doctor. I don't have the constitutional ability to set the fees that private specialists charge for private procedures, that's clear in the Australian Constitution. But what I can do is protect Australians from bill and more and more Australians, more than one in three Australians now are saying that's what they're experiencing when they get a private procedure in a terrific health care system. We have such a terrific health care system, but Australian patients are dealing with really significant costs.
 
JOURNALIST: On the Urgent Care Clinics, ambulance ramping and presentations at Ed were a big factor in the WA election campaign. Pressure on EDs here, here in WA, but across the country, is going up despite the introduction of these Urgent Care Clinics. Do they actually work to reduce ED presentations?
 
BUTLER: There's currently 87 Urgent Care Clinics, some of them have opened only very recently. Gosnells here in Perth, for example, has only been operating a matter of weeks. The network is still growing. The addition of another 50 will grow it to 137. That will mean that four and five Australians live within a 20 minute drive from an Urgent Care Clinic. Where we can measure hospital data, in hospital catchments that have a clinic, they are starting to have an impact on emergency department presentations. Those semi urgent and non-urgent presentations that can adequately be cared for out in the community don't need to be in a fully equipped hospital. They are starting to turn down in hospital catchments areas that have an Urgent Care Clinic. Now that doesn't mean that the sorts of emergencies that do require hospital admission aren't still a very significant pressure on our hospital system. We see that right across the country. We see that right across the developed world. We have a growing population that's getting older, with more complex chronic disease. There was a lot of deferred care through the COVID pandemic that is still a pent-up pressure on the system. I don't pretend that that any single measure is suddenly going to alleviate all of the pressure in our 700 public hospitals. But this will make a meaningful difference. It will make a meaningful difference for hospitals, and importantly, it will make a meaningful difference for patients, because it means they can get timely, free, high quality urgent care instead of having to spend hours and hours in a crowded emergency department.
 
JOURNALIST: The WA Government's resounding Labor win here in the state election. Does that give you confidence going into a federal election?
 
LAWRENCE: Look, I think it's one thing to look at the results, and it was extraordinary for Hasluck, the state members have absolutely proven themselves to be delivering for the local community, and that's certainly shown through in the outcome for the election results. What it does say to me, though, is that we are working strongly and in collaboration and partnership with the state government, and that's exactly what constituents want. We have a Future Made in Australia with a very specific focus for Western Australia that sits around our critical minerals industry, for example, which the Liberal Party opposed, extraordinarily, have opposed a Future Made in Australia, and production tax credits. The very two things that create the jobs for communities like out of here in Ellenbrook.
 
I think constituents are sharp enough to know the difference between state and federal governments, but they are also sharp to know exactly the type of policies that we are standing for and those that which the Liberals are not. To be blocking housing affordability, this is the fastest growing area in the north-eastern corridor of Western Australia. We have the highest mortgage bill. People are aspirational to own a home, and for the Liberal Party to oppose the Housing Australia Future Fund is something that is completely extraordinary. For Peter Dutton to say to the RBA, don't work on decreasing interest rates is galling to people that live out in my community. My constituents know this, I'm out doorknocking. They're wise to that push button Dutton is intent on pressing. And they will, hopefully, come election day, it will show similar results to what we saw at the state level.
 
JOURNALIST: This is a tight electorate, Hasluck, do you think those results will translate federally?
 
LAWRENECE: The issues that are important to people within Hasluck are cost of living. We are delivering increasing wages growth. Early childhood educators work here. Aged Care Workers work here. They've all received increases in their wages, which the Liberals opposed. They all have tax cuts. Every single worker in Hasluck received a tax cut, which the Liberals opposed. The differences between the two parties could not be more stark. We are not the same, and I think the constituents of Hasluck will absolutely understand that come polling day.
 
BUTLER: Thanks everyone.