Belmont North's Diana Taaffe can't understand why she wasn't entitled to a Medicare rebate, after paying $550 for an MRI.
Mrs Taaffe, 85, said her GP sent her for the scan because "she thought I had a hernia".
"It came back that I had a little hernia, but I also had a lesion on my liver," Mrs Taaffe said.
She initially had an ultrasound and a CAT scan, but they made "no conclusion".
So she went for the MRI, where "they said it was $300".
"I said that's OK. Then because they had to look at the liver with a special contrast, I had to pay another $250."
Mrs Taaffe, a pensioner, said she was "not whingeing that I had to pay".
"My beef is I think you should get some Medicare rebate," she said.
"There must be a lot of people out there who can't afford to pay for an MRI. I'm advocating for them.
"I'm lucky I had enough savings to pay it, but it leaves a big hole."
Consumers Health Forum of Australia CEO Elizabeth Deveny said "out-of-pocket costs for diagnostic imaging, which includes MRIs, can be quite expensive for consumers".
"When Medicare rebates or bulk-billing aren't available to consumers to cover their scans, it means fewer people get the scans they need, or delay them," Dr Deveny said.
She said the consumer group had supported restrictions on referrals for MRIs, but now felt "perhaps the pendulum has swung too much away from what consumers need".
The group would like the ongoing MBS [Medicare Benefits Schedule] review process to "revisit this issue" to ensure the right balance between "access to care and efficient use of scarce health resources".
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists president John Slavotinek called on the federal government to "expand Medicare-funded MRI services across every part of the country".
"The system, as it stands, has left certain patients based on their location or postcode facing high out-of-pocket costs," Professor Slavotinek said.
Mrs Taaffe contacted the Newcastle Herald to share her story, after reading about the case of Wallsend pensioner Sue Morrison.
Mrs Morrison had to pay $365 for a GP-referred MRI to examine a 4-centimetre mass in her thigh muscle, amid concerns it could be cancerous.
She believes all required MRIs should be bulk-billed for pensioners.
As reported last week, the federal health department stated that "GPs are only able to request a small number of Medicare-eligible MRI services" mainly for the head, spine and knee for patients up to age 50.
"Most MRI scans must be requested by a specialist to be eligible for a Medicare rebate," it said.
However, Mrs Morrison said people face long waits to see specialists.
The MBS [Medicare Benefits Schedule] Review Taskforce decides which procedures get Medicare rebates.
In a review from 2015 to 2020, the taskforce found that "some GPs requested MRI scans for services where it was not necessarily needed".
Mrs Taaffe said her GP's decision to send her for an MRI was because the ultrasound and CAT scan reports suggested it.
"I can understand they don't want GPs to be sending people for MRIs willy nilly," she said.
