Russell McGowan has been navigating Canberra's health system with a chronic illness over the past 30 years.
He said he could relate to new survey results showing Canberrans have one of the nation's lowest satisfaction rates with the state of healthcare, but said he had some better experiences due to his familiarity with the system.
The Australian Healthcare Index showed the ACT's low bulk-billing rate was the main reason for Canberrans' dissatisfaction.
The survey revealed only 30 per cent of Canberra respondents had been bulk-billed during their last doctor's appointment. This was the lowest of any state or territory.
Mr McGowan said he preferred the public system to the private system.
"I've had to see public and private specialists. Cost-wise, the public ones are terrific. Access-wise they can be problematic but the more you know about the health system, the easier it is to access," Mr McGowan said.
Mr McGowan said he does not pay out-of-pocket costs to see his doctor as he had been seeing the same one for 40 years. But he feared this would change once his doctor retires.
"I'm happy with my relationship with my GP but he's about my age and he's going to retire soon. I doubt whether I will find another GP in Canberra who is prepared to accept the Medicare rebate I assigned to them as full payment," he said.
The Australian Healthcare Index is a survey of nearly 10,000 Australians from across the country. It is published by Healthengine and the Australian Patients Association.
It found more than three-quarters of Canberrans said cost-of-living pressures had affected their healthcare decisions, 68 per cent delaying GP visits and 57 per cent delaying dental treatment.
Fifty-five per cent of ACT respondents said they had to pay out-of-pocket costs every time they visited a doctor in the past two years, the highest of any state or territory.
The participants are weighted to be representative of the population, with the ACT making up 2 per cent of respondents.
Tasmania was the only jurisdiction to score a lower satisfaction rate than the ACT.
The national survey results showed nearly half of all respondents were going to the doctor less often and 60 per cent were delaying doctor visits. Three-quarters of respondents said cost-of-living pressures had affected their healthcare decisions.
Respondents said the top challenges for healthcare were the increasing out-of-pocket costs for visits to the doctor, emergency department wait times and private health insurance costs.
Healthengine chief executive Dan Stinton said the result of more people delaying healthcare would create even more pressure for the system.
"The issue we're going to see downstream from this is we're going to end up in a circumstance where if people are delaying a visit to their GP, delaying a visit to their dentist, even delaying a regular visit to their physio or other primary healthcare practitioner what happens is conditions are either not diagnosed or they're allowed to spread," he said.
"What happens is conditions get worse, they're harder to treat, they've less effective at being treated and they often involve complex interventions, more medication and that comes with a massive cost as well."
