Sandwiched between the unrelenting pressures of caring for three young children and an aging and sick mother, Ella Helman has been struggling to ensure everyone in her family receives the health care they need.
The 36-year-old public servant lives in a dual-income household, but said mounting cost-of-living pressures had forced her to cut back.
“We have a mortgage and we’re really struggling to pay for everything that we need to. My children don’t have complex medical issues, but they do have medical issues — all three of my children have several food allergies that require us to see specialists fairly regularly,” she said.
“It feels like every single year it’s getting tighter and tighter, insurance premiums are going up, everything’s going up, and we are having to make those difficult decisions about — do we delay that appointment?”
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Those decisions are even harder when it comes to her 60-year-old mother Cathy, who has a complex cluster of health issues, lives in public housing and is on the disability pension.
“She struggles daily just to meet her basic needs, let alone preventive health … it’s the things that are bubbling under the surface but there’s no money there to get them addressed and then eventually they become major, major problems,” she said.
“But by that point, that person’s quality of life is so diminished, it’s going to cost the health system probably a lot more to address the issue. It doesn’t make any sense … and it’s a daily struggle.”
One in two Australians missed out on health care they needed last year mainly because they could not afford it, according to a new report by the peak healthcare consumers group.
The Consumers Health Forum (CHF) surveyed more than 5,100 Australians, with the results revealing a health system that has become increasingly unaffordable.
Where Australians are spending their money
The survey showed entrenched inequities that meant Australians with lower incomes, chronic illness or diverse backgrounds were more likely to miss out on care.
“Australians still trust the care they receive. What they don’t trust is whether they can afford it when they need it,” CHF CEO Elizabeth Deveny said.
“That gap between confidence in care and confidence in affordability is the fault line in our health system. If people delay care because of cost, then universal care exists on paper but not in practice.”
55 per cent of people delayed taking or getting medication
The report provides a snapshot of consumer sentiment in 2025, before the impact of the latest escalation in the Middle East war began constricting household budgets even more.Â
The report found about 50 per cent of people missed out on seeing a doctor or dentist when they needed to last year, skipped a recommended medical test or treatment, or did not fill out a prescription or take medicine when required.
The main reason people did not access health care was cost, with 55 per cent of people who did not fill a prescription or take medicine when they needed to citing affordability, up from about 47 per cent the year before.Â
Almost 50 per cent of people who skipped recommended medical tests or appointments said they could not afford to, compared to about 44 per cent in 2024.
While 67 per cent of people who did not see a dentist when they needed to said it was because they could not afford it.Â
More broadly, the report also looked at financial stress as a key social determinant of health.
It found more than 35 per cent of people reported experiencing at least one financial difficulty or situation in 2025, with some having to resort to asking for financial help from family and friends, skipping meals or pawning items to get by.
While Australians showed moderate confidence in the healthcare system, only one in three felt confident they could afford care if they became seriously ill.
“Affordability is not an abstract economic issue. It determines whether someone sees a doctor, fills a prescription, fixes their teeth, or waits and hopes a problem will pass,” the report said.
“When care becomes unaffordable, the burden does not disappear. It shifts onto families, communities, and the public system. This is not inevitable. It reflects choices about how health care is funded, priced, and prioritised.”
Elizabeth Deveny, CEO of Consumers Health Forum of Australia, says poor health outcomes have an impact on national productivity.
 (Supplied: Darryl Torpy)
The report also found people with lower incomes, who had chronic illness, spoke languages other than English, or who were LGBTQI all had higher odds of having unmet health needs.
The cost of private health insurance was overwhelmingly the main reason why people did not have it, according to the survey, with coverage sitting at just over 60 per cent.
Although having private health insurance can improve the level of care someone receives, it can also unintentionally reinforce health inequities for those unable to afford it, the report found.
Australians ‘very clear’ about what they expect the government to do
Dr Deveny said Australians were “very clear” about priorities for change, listing more health workers, lower costs for care and medicines and better access as their top areas for immediate reform.
She said the upcoming May federal budget was an opportunity to address some of those concerns.
“The purpose of this survey is not just to describe problems. It is to help governments and health leaders see where reform is landing — and where it is not,” she said.
“If we want a health system that people trust, the system must remain both high quality and genuinely affordable.”
Health Minister Mark Butler pointed to measures the federal government had implemented to make health care more affordable since coming to office, like slashing the cost of medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and an $8.5 billion pre-election commitment to expand bulk billing and bolster the workforce.
“When we came to government in 2022, it had never been harder or more expensive to find a doctor,” Mr Butler said.
“Bulk billing was in freefall after a decade of cuts and neglect to Medicare. That’s why strengthening Medicare has been a key focus of our government. The Albanese Labor government has made the single largest investment in Medicare since its creation over 40 years ago.”
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For Ella Helman, who is also a volunteer consumer advocate for CHF, change is crucial, especially for those who are living on government payments.
“These people are really living on the bread line … health care in the public system needs to be free and it needs to be accessible,” she said.
“It’s almost like all of the decisions made by policy makers and government officials are treating them as one cohort, and saying … ‘We don’t think you deserve a quality of life that is equal to these other people who are working and generating money through taxes’.
“To be honest, I’m really sick of it. And I think that we need serious action to bring equity back into the healthcare system.”