Analysis
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said the government’s planned GP fee does not have the support needed to pass the Senate. Photo: Josh Robenstone
Tony Abbott has not given you a Christmas bonus in scrapping his widely disliked co-payment plan – he’s given himself one.
By keeping the cut to the Medicare rebate Mr Abbott has essentially left it up to the nation’s doctors to impose the fee of their own accord.
And they will impose it.
Australia’s doctors have never been against the idea that people should pay more for their services, in fact, many welcome it.
That’s because our general practitioners are badly paid by doctor standards. In fact, the gap between what you earn as a GP and what you earn as a specialist doctor is greater in Australia than almost any other OECD country, with specialists earning close to double that of their GP colleagues.
That’s despite everyone agreeing that the best thing we could do for our country’s health is to ensure everyone gets high-quality care from a GP that keeps them as healthy as possible, before they end up needing (expensive) hospital care.
An ongoing freeze on payments for GPs will continue with this plan – although the blow has been softened with the decision to exclude the most vulnerable patients, such as pensioners.
The Australian Medical Association is very pleased that the government has back-flipped on this crucial issue. A co-payment for the most vulnerable was a disaster in the making, with the sick getting sicker and our hospital emergency departments flooded with people who simply could not afford to see a GP.
Our hospitals are already at breaking point. In some places fewer than half the patients who show up in emergency departments are seen within the four-hour waiting limit agreed to by the states and federal government.
In some parts of Sydney, you now wait longer than ever before for so-called “elective” surgery (which probably doesn’t feel so “elective” when you are waiting for your hip to be replaced).
But not everyone who is struggling has a health care card that will protect them from the cut, particularly in the parts of Sydney where health services are already struggling to meet demand.
And these cuts may be the straw that broke the camel’s back for many GP clinics that will decide they simply cannot absorb the fee, and so will no longer bulk bill.
Once that happens, it’s not a leap to assume many will go further than simply $5, and start to recoup the many years of fee increases they have missed out on.