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 Home News General
Study Proves Union Claims on Government's Medicare Plan25 September 2003An independent study has confirmed that it will be more expensive to see a doctor for millions of Australians if the federal government’s proposed changes to Medicare go ahead.
The research found that the number of visits to a doctor which are bulk-billed (free of charge) would fall from 68 per cent to 50 per cent. The amount patients had to pay would rise by 56 per cent. The report was complied by Latrobe University's Australian Institute for Primary Care for the Senate committee inquiring into the government's changes announced early this year. Under those changes doctors would be given incentives to bulk bill pensioners and concession card holders. But in return for this doctors would be free to charge higher fees for the rest of their patients. The researchers found that the out of pocket fees for patients would fall slightly in major metropolitan areas but increase in the outer suburbs of cities and in the country. They found that Labor's alternative plan would lift the rate of bulk-billing by GPs from 70 per cent to 77 per cent. HSU national secretary Craig Thomson said the report proved the union's arguments about higher fees were totally correct. "This is the evidence that the government does not want people to see,'' he said. "It won't produce its own figures on what its changes will cost but now we have it from an independent inquiry. "All the government is prepared to do is try and patch up the problems it has created in Medicare by letting bulk billing run down so dramatically. "But its changes will only make it harder to find a doctor who bulk bills and everyone else will pay more."
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© 2003 Health Services Union (HSU) |
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