The government says it is looking “seriously” at a plan that would exempt pensioners and other disadvantaged Australians from paying the proposed $7 GP fee.
Health Minister Minister Peter Dutton says he has sought costs for an alternative plan being put forward by the doctors’ union, the Australian Medical Association.
The AMA’s counter policy would void the fee for the elderly and disadvantaged as well as indigenous Australians who visit their doctor through Aboriginal Medical Services.
Mr Dutton says he has asked his department to cost the policy.
“We’re having discussions with the AMA and they’ve put forward an alternate model. They still believe and support a co-payment model and we’re having a look and pricing what it is that they’ve suggested to us and we’ll negotiate with them” he told 2UE Radio in Sydney.
Mr Dutton will also need to negotiate with the crossbench senators because Labor and the Greens are opposed to the proposed fee.
He says he is also considering other compromise models, including Liberal-Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm’s idea of reducing patient medicine costs under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.
“If there are further changes we can make that people believe can make it fairer, I’m happy to listen to that,” he said.
“I believe we can negotiate this,” Mr Dutton said.
The government says the main concern raised about its GP fee is not the $7 cost but the ability of the poor to pay.
The flagged compromise follows a trio of government backbenchers publicly calling for the GP fee to be exempted for pensioners.
Queensland Nationals MP George Christensen has said such a move would be politically sensible for the government.
Meanwhile the consultant who first proposed the fee to the Abbott government’s commission of audit, Terry Barnes, says there is a case for making the co-payment fairer for the less well off, the elderly and those with chronic illnesses.
But he says the AMA needs to release their policy for the same kind of public scrutiny that his proposal and the government’s proposal have received.
“Why shouldn’t the AMA’s proposal be made public, they’ve seen everybody else’s?” he told Fairfax Media.
“This is more than just a matter for vested interests,” he said and urged the government to extract concessions from doctors and not just cave in to the union’s demands.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said the minister’s willingness to exempt the “GP tax” for some showed it was an “ill-conceived idea” that it should be dumped altogether.
“The whole GP tax is a clunker. It’s rotten, its unfair, it’s a broken promise,” Mr Shorten told reporters in Sydney.
“Don’t do half hearted measures, drop the whole GP tax,” he said.