https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/648
Destroying Medicare
Wednesday, September 11, 1991 - 10:00
By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — Labor "left" Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe's image minder probably thought it wasn't very good to have a picket of community health workers, their patients and a few leftists outside his electorate office the day after the federal budget was announced. So we were invited in to speak to the man himself about his cuts to Medicare.
The press was excluded from this "unique opportunity to speak to the community so soon after the budget was released", as Howe put it. He had a different story to tell them.
He wanted to explain to us concerned members of the community that the cut in the Medicare rebate by $3.50 per consultation was really part of a grand plan to expand community health services and defeat the nasty, greedy, overservicing private general practitioners who, he said, were rorting and wrecking the Medicare system. The cut to the rebate was an attempt to save Medicare, he claimed.
If this was his plan, why didn't he hit the rorters and increase funding for community health? That would be too simple, he said. We can't take on the Australian Medical Association head on, and there isn't the money to throw around, so instead he decided to whack on the $3.50 (rising to $5) co-payment.
Since there was a huge oversupply of GPs in the major cities, he said, many will be pressured to absorb the cut in rebate and not pass it on to bulkbilled patients. The cuts were aimed at curtailing overservicing by some GPs.
But even as Howe concluded his monologue with a thick-lipped smile to an unconvinced and infuriated audience, his flickering eyes and folding hands betrayed him.
The cut in rebate aims to shift $163.9 million of health-care costs onto poorer non-pensioner patients this year, followed by a further $306.1 million next year. Medicare architect Dr John Deeble says the budget measures did not shift resources to where they were needed but only transferred some costs to some users.
I remember the suggestion of "...and defeat the nasty, greedy, overservicing private general practitioners who, he said, were rorting and wrecking the Medicare system. "
The government insisted we had too many doctors in Oz, and claimed the AMA's reply that most doctors were flat out dealing with patient demand was a lie, despite demonstrable long waiting times for appointments.
Later, after the funding cuts for medical education we developed an undeniable doctor shortage and started encouraging foreign born graduates to stay here rather than return home to serve their own countries needs.
Now, I'm benefiting from the aftermath of that time - the current shortage of people in my field...
