THE head of the doctors’ union has little confidence state leaders are genuinely committed to achieving a breakthrough on health funding.
PREMIERS and chief ministers are meeting with Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Sydney on Wednesday to discuss federation reform, with health funding the top priority.
NSW Premier Mike Baird has suggested raising the GST to cover a shortfall in future health funding while Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is instead proposing an increase to the Medicare levy. Australian Medical Association president Brian Owler says the bigger issue is how the money will get from federal government coffers to the states in order to fund public hospitals. “Whether it’s through the Medicare levy, whether it’s through the GST, whether it’s through income tax, it’s still all going to the federal government,” he told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. Asked how confident he was that leaders were genuinely committed to achieving a breakthrough, Professor Owler said he had very little confidence. He rejected the idea of broadening the GST to include health services and said applying the tax to fresh food was counter-productive to efforts to prevent chronic disease. The current Medicare levy was “nowhere near” to covering the cost of healthcare and there needed to be a “much bigger” increase, he said.