Living in Canberra should come with advantages. You pay more for housing, more for groceries, more for fuel — and the trade-off is meant to be better services. Yet when it comes to healthcare, people in the ACT are being ripped off.
Start with the GP. Canberra has the lowest bulk billing rate in Australia. That means fewer doctors are willing to see you without charging a fee. And when you do pay, you’re charged the highest rates in the nation. Seeing a GP in Canberra is more expensive than anywhere else — and that is just to get in the door.
Need to see a specialist? Brace yourself. Canberrans are slugged with the highest out-of-pocket fees in the country. It’s not unusual for people to be hit with specialist doctor bills exceeding $5,000 for routine procedures such as hip and knee replacements. In a small market with limited competition, surgeons and anaesthetists can set whatever price they like. And patients — often frightened, vulnerable and with no other choice — are forced to pay.
If you’ve taken out health insurance like most Canberrans, you’re punished again. From January, every adult in Canberra with health cover will pay a steeper so-called “ambulance levy” of $180. Families will pay $360 after the ACT Government increased it by 10%. This is a tax, pure and simple — and it doesn’t even fund ambulances. It just disappears into the ACT Government’s coffers. Only one other jurisdiction in Australia pulls this stunt.
But it doesn’t stop there. The ACT Government has turned public hospitals into a revenue-raising machine. Insured patients are targeted and pressured to tick a box so the hospital can bill their insurer. This often happens when people are at their most vulnerable — in pain, anxious, or worried about a loved one. Is that really informed consent?
The result is that one in three of these people who tick the box get a bill, usually from the doctor who saw them. Some of these bills exceed $9,000! That’s not how Medicare is supposed to work. Public hospitals are meant to be free for everyone. Canberrans are already paying their taxes for universal healthcare. Instead, those with insurance are being charged twice — once through their taxes and again through their insurer.
This cynical strategy doesn’t just hit the insured with higher premiums and unexpected doctor’s fees. It makes the system worse for everyone. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, more than 19,000 public hospital bed days in Canberra last year went to patients with private health insurance. On any given day, that meant 52 scarce beds — out of just 600 at Canberra Hospital — were filled by private patients who could often be treated in a local private hospital.
And while those beds are tied up, thousands of Canberrans languish on the waiting list for surgery. As of late August, nearly 2,000 patients were overdue for planned procedures, including more than 100 people who had been waiting over 30 days for urgent surgery. These are people in pain, people who can’t work, people whose conditions are worsening while they sit on a waiting list.
Why are so many patients waiting months for surgery while dozens of hospital beds are occupied every day by insured patients the ACT Government is milking for cash?
The truth is simple. The ACT Government isn’t focused on fixing healthcare. It’s focused on plugging its budget deficit. The “ambulance levy” and the practice of harvesting funds from
health insurers are nothing more than cash grabs. They come at the direct expense of patients — insured and uninsured alike.
This approach is not just unfair. It is unsustainable. It undermines Medicare. It undermines the private system. And it leaves Canberrans with the worst of both worlds: the highest costs, the longest waits, and an endless cycle of blame-shifting.
Canberra deserves better. The ambulance tax must go. Public hospitals must stop targeting insured patients as a source of easy money. And the Barr Government must focus on what matters most: getting people the care they need, when they need it.
It’s time for the ACT Government to stop raiding patients’ pockets and start fixing healthcare.
Dr Rachel David is CEO of Private Healthcare Australia, the peak policy and advocacy body for health insurance funds.