Health Minister Sussan Ley. Picture: David Clark
Coalition MPs are canvassing possible changes to health policy that will reaffirm the government’s commitment to Medicare while also pressing home the need for savings to ensure the system remains sustainable.
While some have questioned whether Health Minister Sussan Ley was absent in countering Labor warnings that a returned Turnbull government would privatise Medicare, others came to her defence yesterday.
The Australian understands that Ms Ley was ready to fight the Labor “Mediscare” tactic during the election period and had made clear her expectation before the May budget that Bill Shorten would seek to campaign on health leading into polling day.
West Australian Liberal senator Chris Back yesterday said Ms Ley had performed well and suggested she should negotiate with the Australian Medical Association to find agreed areas where savings could be found.
“If they are given the challenge by the minister saying ‘where is the waste, come back and tell me where the waste is’ it falls to Sussan to identify where the waste is and channel it back into the health budget,” he said.
Senator Back also questioned whether any modernisation of the payments system — which Mr Turnbull has promised will not be outsourced — could free up funds to be channelled back into health.
“If significant improvements can be made to the payment system and … go back into the Medicare budget, that would appeal to me as something which would be very worthy of examination.”
It is also understood that Ms Ley is prepared to fight to retain the health portfolio although there were no indications yesterday that she would be a likely casualty of any frontbench shake-up following the tight election result.
Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming pushed for a shift of emphasis in the management of the health system and questioned whether modernising the payments system would deliver significant savings.
“State governments such as Queensland, which privatised its payroll system, frequently find themselves in a worse, not better position. We should never take savings for granted simply because we move roles from the public to the private sector,” he said.
Dr Laming, who has previously worked as a GP, instead suggested a shake-up of the system which would see payments to clinicians based on quality and not quantity. He said this shift would reward doctors who oversaw improvements in patient outcomes and not those who saw large volumes of patients without producing results.
“The shift to quality is where the debate needs to go and it is going that way in other countries,” he said. “The only promising path in health reform is paying for quality. There’s plenty of resources for high-quality healthcare if we could remove the waste, duplication and mismanagement. Ultimately, we’ve got to pay for outcomes.”
North Queensland MP Warren Entsch told The Australian the governmenthad to “move very quickly” to reassure the public that Medicare would not be privatised and the payments system would be improved.
He argued there was a level of distrust towards the government and said the robocalls warning voters of a government plan to privatise Medicare, while untrue, proved effective.