Dr Rachel David spoke with 6PR radio Perth about rising specialist doctors’ fees

14 Sep 2026Interviews and Transcripts

Transcript

Station: 6PR Perth
Program: 6PR Breakfast with Millsy & Karl
Date: 14/9/2026
Time: 6:11 AM
Compere: Millsy / Karl

Interviewee: Dr Rachel David, CEO, Private Healthcare Australia

Millsy / Karl	Now, Dr. Rachel David, Private Healthcare Australia CEO. Australia’s paid more than five times the benchmark price for a visit to the specialist doctor on more than a million occasions last year. The Department of Health has found out. Good morning to you, Rachel.
Rachel David	Morning, guys.
Millsy / Karl	Why do we pay more when we go to a specialist in this country?
Rachel David	Well, it’s been it’s been that way for a very long time. The ability for specialists to charge what they like is enshrined in the Constitution in Australia. But what we’re dealing with here is the department has put out a consultation document about what it describes as being excessive fees, which they say have surged ever since the beginning of the pandemic in 2019. So, doctors’ fees have gone up a considerably faster rate than CPI or inflation.
Millsy / Karl	What part of the sorry, but what part of the constitution, Rachel, does it actually state that surgeons will rip us off?
Rachel David	Well, there is this clause in the constitution about civil conscription, which has been interpreted by the medical profession to mean that the what the government can’t basically determine what they’re able to charge.
Millsy / Karl	Right. Okay. So you believe that most people think that they’re being overcharged because these people are specialists and our lives are in their hands.
Rachel David	Well, that’s exactly right. But what we’re finding is that people are being charged wildly different about exactly the same procedure. So someone might go into hospital for a knee replacement with one surgeon and paid no out of pocket, and yet another person may have exactly the same procedure and pay five to $6,000 with no relationship to the quality of the procedure or how well it’s gone or anything like that. So that this is why the department is putting out a consultation document about some of the very expensive fees that we are seeing at the high end of the curve, to firstly to better educate people about what’s happening, but to look at some solutions as well.
Millsy / Karl	So, Rachel, a member of my family just had had an operation. It was four and a half thousand dollars for the anaesthetist fees. We got $875 back under private health or Medicare or both. It’s not much.
Rachel David	Look, that’s not uncommon, unfortunately, and these are just fees have risen faster than the fees of other doctors, particularly since 2019. So this is one of the things the government’s making a very good initial first step by publishing all of specialist, the specialist doctors’ fees on a thing called the Medical Cost Finder website, and that legislation is just going through the Parliament at the moment. So at least when people are talking to their GP about the type of treatment they need, they’ve got a starting point to see how much it’s going to cost. But there is this problem of excessive fees at one end of the curve, where the government believes that we need to look at some more, maybe even some more punitive measures, to try and get them towards to come down to a more reasonable level.
Millsy / Karl	Well, not a good day to do the story when I’m in the hands of a surgeon on and you’re having a nectar test. That’s 1000 bucks an hour, by the way. Yeah, well, they do a good job. They make me wake up, which I’m happy to pay for. Rachel, thanks for your expertise.
Rachel David	Thank you very much. Good day,
Millsy / Karl	Dr. Rachel David, there, Private Healthcare Australia CEO.
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