After an extensive round of consultations with health professionals and patients, Health Minister Sussan Ley has announced that yet more work needs to be done to find solutions to Medicare’s problems.
The government is effectively undermining the power of Medicare as a single payer and the role of Medicare as a universal provider.
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In the final instalment of our series, Lesley Russell asks whether Australians need private health insurance, and what a two-tiered systems means for quality, access and equity.
Medicare and private health insurance partly overlap for hospital entitlements. But nobody can purchase full coverage for health-care costs.
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Private insurance, by its very nature, suppresses price signals and encourages over-servicing and cost escalation.
The relationship between private health insurance and Medicare has been a problem since the Whitlam government introduced universal health care.
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Some people balk at the cost of private insurance – especially the relatively young and healthy – because they don’t see the value of it when they are already covered under Medicare.
With GPs facing greater economic pressure and the health minister considering legislative change to make it easier for GP to charge them, GP co-payments, like Lazarus, may rise again from the dead.
Very high GP attenders cost Medicare an average of A$3,202 in 2012-13, compared to an Australian average of A$690.
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As well as being responsible for a large share of total costs, people who visit the GP more often are more likely to live in the most disadvantaged areas, and to report being in poor health.
How has Medicare spending changed in the last decade?
AAP Image/Joel Carrett
Health Minister Sussan Ley is broadly correct on the numbers – but they are framed in a way that overstates the impression of rising health care expenditure.
Discussions about Medicare’s sustainability under the Abbott government have only concerned how much we spend on the health sector.
AAP/Joel Carrett
Jane Hall, University of Technology Sydney and Kees Van Gool, University of Technology Sydney
The Abbott government “reset” yesterday provides a valuable opportunity to reconsider health policies based on the idea that Australia’s health system is unsustainable. But first it will need to embrace…
Non-concession patients may end up paying a A$30 to A$40 co-payment, not a A$5 one.
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The Christmas-New Year silly season gave Australia three health policies. At the start of December, the policy from the 2014 budget was still on life support. But in mid-December, then-health minister…
We need a plan to provide patients with the right care at the right place in the right time.
AAP/Alan Porritt
As the 2015 parliamentary year approaches, The Conversation is examining five key policy areas that have a new minister in charge: health, immigration, defence, social services and science. Today we begin…
Medicare reform must focus on increasing value, not just cutting costs.
World Bank Photo Collection/Flickr
The primary care reform debate of the last 15 months got off on the wrong foot. It was framed in terms of cutting government spending, with an overlay that consumers needed to bear the brunt of system…
The AMA described the proposed reimbursement changes for level B consultations as “an assault on general practice”.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has emerged from the recent brouhaha over the Abbott government’s proposed Medicare reforms as both a winner in the protection of doctors’ incomes and an apparent…
A blueprint for Medicare reform must include cost control, but also support quality and equity.
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The Abbott government is struggling with its Medicare co-payment reform, scrapping the latest version for a period of consultation, starting this week. The government claims it wants to make Medicare sustainable…
The Coalition government’s proposed changes to Medicare have never managed to garner public favour.
AAP/Peter Boyle
The government has backed down from its plan to cut Medicare rebates to doctors, which was to start on Monday, January 19, after several days of public pressure. For those not au fait with the world of…
University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker and Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics including the tension between Julie Bishop and Peta Credlin, the GP co-payment changes and Prime…
The big losers will be ordinary patients.
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In the May budget, the Commonwealth government proposed a A$7 co-payment for GP services and tests done outside a hospital. After seven months of fierce criticism, the government abandoned those plans…
The government has changed its proposed $7 GP co-payment to $5 but the flaws underlying the policy remain.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
The Federal government’s attempt to impose a $5 co-payment on GP services by regulation raises the same issues as its previous failed attempt to impose a $7 co-payment through legislation. The consequences…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne