Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Australia Institute.
Luke Slawomirski is a health economist, policy analyst and former clinician. He has worked for State governments and the Commonwealth, and spent several years working with the OECD in Paris. He is a visiting lecturer in public health at Imperial College London. His interests include prevention and public health, healthcare quality and the political economy of health. He has led several OECD reports and academic papers, and frequently writes opinion pieces in the local media.
The second reading of the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026 was heard in the House of Representatives yesterday. The Bill would require medical specialists to publish their fees on the Medical Costs Finder (MCF) website, giving patients comparable information about how much procedures like a joint replacement or colonoscopy will cost them in the private sector.
10 of 13 articles
A dangerous genie is trying to escape from its bottle. Letting it out will diminish us as a people and a nation. Beating hate requires leadership, investment and institutions that help people belong. And it requires politicians willing to stand up to racism, not harvest it or fail to call out those who indulge in it.
Last week, Health Minister Mark Butler told the ABC that the government would be moving forward with its proposal to change private health insurance rebates for older Australians. The proposed change has prompted the usual warning: if people over 65 pay more for cover, they will drop their insurance and flood public hospitals. That sounds plausible. But the claim is overstated.
There are crowded buses … and then there’s the gas export tax bus. On board are unusual travelling companions: the Greens, David Pocock, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Clive Palmer, ACOSS, the ACTU and even the Commonwealth Bank.
Australia’s win against tobacco shows that we can solve big public health problems. But there are other health epidemics that we’re way behind on. When it comes to obesity – a major risk factor in many health problems – Australia is in the top five nations.
The $17 billion in revenue that Australia is foregoing each year by failing to properly tax gas exports is enough to fund many of the essential services Australians rely on. One example is the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), which purchases approved medicines from pharmaceutical companies and subsidises their cost for Australian patients.
This is the third of three articles examining the value private health insurance and private healthcare bring to the Australian health system.
This is the second of three articles examining the value private health insurance and private healthcare bring to the Australian health system.
This is the first of three articles examining the value private health insurance and private healthcare bring to the Australian healthcare system.
In a new ad campaign, a mining lobby group claims that mining companies pay “enough tax to fund Medicare.” This is not true. Over the past ten years, the total cost of Medicare was $322 billion, while the mining industry paid $228 billion in tax, a gap of some $94 billion.
