Twenty-six Indigenous health services across the Northern Territory have confirmed they will not be charging a $7 GP co-payment in any of their clinics.
The federal budget included plans for a GP co-payment, but it has failed to gather enough Senate support.
The chief executive of the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the NT (AMSANT), John Paterson, said Aboriginal health services would have to cut services and programs to afford not charging the proposed co-payment.
He said the decision would cost a large Aboriginal health service up to $750,000 a year.
“That is a huge financial burden on any organisation to try and meet that funding to offset the $7 co-payment,” he said.
“It will then be up to the Aboriginal Health Services (AHS) boards to make the hard decisions about what funding, what services, what programs they’re going to have to cut to meet the financial payment.”
“It defeats the purpose of the original objective of establishing AHS, which was to provide a universal primary health care suite of services to Aboriginal people, to hopefully close the gap.”
Mr Paterson was concerned multiple co-payments of $7 for X-rays and specialist referrals could exacerbate the cost.
“Aboriginal people just don’t have that sort of money available,” he said.
“And not only Aboriginal people but the most vulnerable people in our community.
“The impact of this payment will actually widen the health gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.”
He said medical services were already receiving feedback that people would be reluctant to seek medical attention if they had to make a co-payment.
“It will impact on staffing, it will impact on services and programs,” he said.
“It was our understanding there was going to be no cuts to frontline services by the Coalition Government.”
Mr Paterson said he was heartened by the support of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), which has put forward an alternative co-payment model to the Federal Government.
‘No way’ Indigenous can make co-payment
AMA national president Brian Owler has been touring the NT this week. He travelled to Bathurst Island, 100 kilometres north of Darwin, on Wednesday.
“The problem we have with the co-payment model that’s been proposed by Government is not that there’s a co-payment,” he said.
“But there’s not the protections there for vulnerable people, vulnerable patients and particularly for Indigenous Australians.
“There’s just no way that people in these communities are going to pay $7 to visit a GP, let alone for pathology and diagnostic imagining.
“There will be a loss of $14.10 per consultation.”
He said health services had little alternative to not charging the GP co-payment.
“The only alternative for them is to forego the money which essentially means a loss of funding for Indigenous health care,” Mr Owler said.
He added the co-payment would mean a loss of some gains made in Indigenous health.
“If you lose funding you have to cut services,” he said.
“We can’t afford to lose frontline staff. Many of our Indigenous health services don’t have enough staff as it is.
“What we’ve seen today, talking to doctors on Bathurst Island, what they want is more funding for antenatal care and early childhood intervention so we can actually give kids the right start to life.
“If we do that we know they’re much more likely to attend school and perform at school and reach year 10 or hopefully year 12.
“Then they can go out and get a job and break the problems we have in terms of social determinants of health.
“To suggest that we’re throwing money at a problem, for instance suggesting it’s not delivering outcomes, is wrong.
“We’ve made tremendous gains in terms of life expectancy and dropping infant mortality and the child death rate for Indigenous Australians.