Shorten under fire over ‘attack on doctors’
Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has been accused of a “vicious attack” on the medical profession.
Bill Shorten has been accused of a “vicious attack” on the medical profession after suggesting doctors were selling out to the Turnbull government in a “cash for no comment” deal to buy their silence.
The Opposition Leader told doctors yesterday the government’s decision to increase spending on Medicare rebates was the “minimum” effort to make health policy go away as an election issue.
“If you like, it’s the minimum they can get away with paying to keep people silent,” he told the Australian Medical Association conference. “It’s like cash for no comment.”
Mr Shorten’s remarks came at the end of a week when the government attacked him for obstructing an $8.2 billion increase in the Medicare levy and it was revealed that some Labor frontbenchers did not agree with their leader’s strategy.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said Mr Shorten’s claims were a “cry of frustration” over Labor’s weaknesses in the health debate following the budget decisions to restore the indexation of Medicare rebates over time.
“This is an extraordinary and almost unprecedented attack on the integrity of the medical profession,” said Mr Hunt, who struck deals this month with the AMA, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Pharmacy Guild, Medicines Australia and the Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association in the wake of the budget.
“So it’s a vicious attack on the medial profession and clearly a cry of frustration from the Opposition that they have lost the health debate in the very week they are refusing to support their own NDIS.”
Mr Shorten argued yesterday that the government’s new spending still meant money was being “ripped out” of the system. He cited Parliamentary Budget Office advice that immediately restoring indexation, rather than the government’s staged plan, would cost $3.2bn over four years.
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