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Australia's federal government has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the fees that specialist doctors charge for their services. On a recent podcast, Health Minister Mark Butler described the high prices as a "barbecue stopper."

The inquiry's job is to look at the "availability, cost, and equity of access to medical specialist services across Australia, including in metropolitan, regional, and rural communities," according to the inquiry's website. It will consider the effects on patients, families, and the broader health system. 

Since the launch, the health minister has been vocal about his views on the rising cost of specialist care, telling one interviewer that there were too many outliers in the specialist field charging "outrageous" fees for common procedures.

The medical community has responded by highlighting the government's own failure to address the rising cost of providing healthcare. The Australian Society of Ophthalmologists called Butler's criticisms a "cheap shot" and an attempt to distract from bigger problems.

Inadequate Funding

"There's political traction to be had when you're trying to divert the focus from what the real issue is, which is inadequate funding of the cost of healthcare," Fred Betros MD, a general surgeon in Sydney and vice president of the Australian Medical Association's New South Wales branch, told Medscape News Australia. "The Medicare rebate is just not fit for purpose — it hasn't been for decades — and it's getting to the point now where we're getting a crescendo effect, and all relevant stakeholders are feeling the pressure, and none more so than the patients and the doctors trying to run their practices."

Australia's Medicare system operates according to a fee-for-service model, in which healthcare professionals set their own fees for the services they provide. Patients claim rebates from the government for those services. The rebates vary according to the duration, complexity, and type of consultation.

The costs of providing specialist care are substantial, said Betros, including indemnity insurance and specialist equipment. The fee for a specialist service may be two to three times the Medicare rebate value of that service. "The fact that [the government is] even talking about a multiple of the scheduled fee being acceptable just signals that there's just not enough funding in the system to provide the quality healthcare we need," he said.

A 2025 report found that specialist fees have increased by 73% since 2010, and patients who face an out-of-pocket cost for specialist care are paying an average of $300 per year. 

Specialist care is available for free through public hospitals, but most elective surgery takes place in the private health system. In the public hospital system, waiting times for specialist care — especially elective surgery — can be long. Moreover, the length of elective surgery waiting lists has increased over the past few years. Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare suggest that while 90% of people referred for elective surgery will be admitted within 329 days, 6% wait more than a year for their procedure. 

Changing Community Needs

Speaking to Medscape News Australia, Kudzai Kanhutu, MBBS, an infectious diseases physician at Royal Melbourne Hospital and dean of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, welcomed an independent review of the situation as an opportunity to address concerns about specialist fees. "The framing would be helpful if it is couched within the setting of, 'We just want to see what is happening across the system,' as opposed to implying that most physicians or specialists are engaging in predatory practices," she said. "We hope that it would contribute to a conversation about how we can better grow and redistribute the medical workforce today." 

The inquiry could help to address some of the myths and distrust that surround specialist fees, said Kanhutu, as well as providing important clarity and insights into how this part of the Australian healthcare system works. "There is this impression that people just set up shop and set prices arbitrarily," she said. 

She also welcomed an interrogation of how the Medicare rebate system was operating in the current sociodemographic context of Australia, pointing out that the Medicare system that was originally established doesn't reflect the current state of healthcare or the community's needs or expectations. 

"We've seen a dramatic shift in the population — whether it's demographically, age-wise, even socioeconomically, background, location, even the cohorts of people who are coming into the country over time," she said. "To double down on a version of a system that is now quite dated is a mistake."

Betros and Kanhutu reported no relevant financial relationships.