The Abbott government’s plan to freeze Medicare rebates will have a greater impact on patients than the now-abandoned $5 co-payment and could discourage bulk-billing, new research shows.
A paper published by the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) on Monday suggests the freeze will cost GPs $384.32 in 2017-18 dollars per 100 consultations, equating to a $8.43 co-payment for each non-concessional visit.
The paper shows the policy could have a greater impact on practices that serve rural and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.
Early this month, the Coalition abandoned its policy to cut by $5 the Medicare rebates for non-concession adult consultations, a cost that would have been passed on the patients and was commonly referred to as a co-payment.
The prime minister, Tony Abbott, said at the time that the co-payment was “dead, buried and cremated”.
But the government retains a savings measure not to increase Medicare rebates until July 2018. This freeze on indexation means the amounts will not keep pace with rising GP costs.
The study in the MJA sought to quantify how much extra GPs would need to charge non-concession patients to recoup the amount lost by the rebate freeze. It assumed annual inflation of 2.5%.
The researchers from the Family Medicine Research Centre at the University of Sydney found the rebate freeze would cost GPs 7.1% of their relative rebate income, which if shared among non-concessional patients would drive up out-of-pocket costs by $8.43.
“As the rural incentive is higher than the urban, GPs claiming the rural bulk-billing incentive would face a greater relative loss in rebate income due to inflation: 10 cents more per non-concessional patient in 2015-16 ($2.84) and 29 cents more in 2017-18 ($8.72),” they wrote.
The paper said if the government had pushed ahead with the $5 rebate cut along with the freeze, the combined impact of the policies would be 11.2% of of GP rebate income by 2017-18.
“Public discussion has mainly focused on the now retracted $5 reduction, and the freeze has received far less attention. Yet, with time, it will have a greater impact,” the paper said.
And it warned that the reduction in GP rebate income due to the freeze “may force GPs who currently bulk bill to cover their loss by charging non-concessional patients a co-payment”.
“The freeze is therefore likely to have a greater impact on practices that serve socioeconomically disadvantaged populations,” the paper said.
“GPs practising in these circumstances would have to absorb the reduction in gross income, and this may not be viable.”
The health minister, Sussan Ley, has previously said the freeze remained government policy, but indicated she would continue to “consult the profession, patients, consumers, everyone with an interest in this area to make sure that together we come up with sustainable options”.
Labor’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, said the study confirmed what the opposition had warned about the government’s push to undermine Medicare’s universal healthcare.
“Tony Abbott’s promise that the GP tax is dead is as believable as his promises before the election of no new taxes and no cuts to health,” King said.