Federal election 2016: Why not save Medicare billions?

What does privatising Medicare even mean? The fact that there is no sensible answer to this question doesn’t worry Bill Shorten or his advisers one jot.

The focus groups say they hate privatisation and love Medicare. Put those two thoughts together and Labor thinks it’s on to a vote-winning formula.

But just think about it. Who is going to buy an arrangement that involves the government paying billions of dollars each year to healthcare providers on the basis of the treatments they provide are classified according to the Medicare Benefits Schedule? Where is the business model in that?

And who in their right mind is opposed to exploring means of improving the efficiency of the payments system?

The current IT that underpins Medicare is obsolete and clunky. It makes sense to consider options to save money actually running Medicare so the released funds can be used to treat patients.

And so what if the Productivity Commission is looking at the delivery of human services? None of the PC’s recommendations are binding on the government and maybe the report will come up with some good ideas about getting more bang for our buck when it comes to health, education, disability services and the like.

Why does Labor think it’s a good idea to throw additional billions of dollars at unfreezing the MBS and retaining the ineffective bulk-billing incentive for pathology and medical imaging?

For one thing, there is no room in the budget that allows for this profligate use of taxpayers’ funds. But, more importantly, the rates of bulk-billing have been rising in the context of the current freeze of the MBS that has been in place since 2013. And note that bulk-billing by general practitioners, who provide frontline primary healthcare, is now close to an all-time high at 85 per cent.

It also beggars belief why Labor would unfreeze the MBS for high-earning specialists, some of whom charge substantial co-payments and are likely to continue to do so.

And why would Labor bother to retain the bulk-billing incentive for pathology and medical imaging? Have you met any poor pathologists and radiologists recently? Have you noticed the high returns earned by the firms that own pathology and imaging practices?

Since the incentive was introduced, the rate of bulk billing for pathology and medical imaging has increased by one percentage point. This is a poor return for an intervention that costs $884 million over four years.

You have to hand it to the Australian Medical Association and those large corporate pathology/imaging companies — they have really managed to get in the ear of Labor.

The real tragedy of this faux scare campaign is that it diverts attention from the lack of coherent health policies on the part of both major parties.

There are plenty of issues to be tackled — the MBS and the regulation of private health insurance need to be overhauled, the market power of some providers should be tackled — but we won’t be hearing about any of this in the next two weeks.