HEALTH: 'Bizarre decisions' and no plan to save Medicare

Labor has also declined to budget at all ​for Covid-19 measures after mid-next year, and its rhetoric on fixing our Medicare system does not match up to its actions.

Labor has also declined to budget at all ​for Covid-19 measures after mid-next year, and its rhetoric on fixing our Medicare system does not match up to its actions.

Labor has marketed this health budget as “beginning the task of strengthening Medicare”.

It claims this budget will and addressing “a decade of cuts and neglect” and reaffirm general practice as the cornerstone of our health system​.  But its rhetoric on Medicare ​does not match up to ​its actions.

Medicare rebates for GP consultation items are now critically low after being frozen for the best part of a decade. Labor is not increasing rebates. It has ignored a request by doctors for a new MBS item number for 60-minute consultations to allow GPs to be reimbursed for complex care which they currently perform partly for free​.

Labor has also declined to budget at all ​for Covid-19 measures after mid-next year, a bizarre decision that will further infuriate medics.  The $750m Labor has allocated towards bolstering Medicare and making it fit-for-purpose will appear in the next federal budget in May. But right now, GPs are shutting up shop and patients are struggling to secure appointments because the viability of ​general practice is in crisis. Yet the government in incurring a huge capital spend and adding another layer to the health system through its establishment of 50 urgent care clinics at a cost of $235.0m. 

Like the urgent care clinics, Labor’s big-spending health measures in this budget are all election commitments, many very worthy, such as $452.0 million commitment over 6 years for the establishment of new comprehensive cancer centres in Brisbane and Adelaide. But it leaves little left to devote to immediate pressing concerns.

Labor is investing significantly to incentivise doctors to work out in the bush.

Rural doctors will be paid up to $10,500 a year more as a result of a $74.1m incentive program that forms the centrepiece of Labor’s spending commitments on rural health. 

The $10,500 incentive payments for rural generalists is part of a $185.3m rural workforce package designed to attract, support and retain more doctors and allied health professionals in regional and rural communities.

The $10,500 incentive payments are in recognition for rural generalist doctors’ extended scope of practice, with generalists often delivering babies and performing minor surgery. There will also be an increase to the general rural loading under the practice stream of the Workforce Incentive Program and an expansion to the list of eligible health professionals, at a cost of $29.4m over four years.

The government will also provide funding for a new medical training campus in Cairns, as well as funding 20 additional commonwealth-supported places at James Cook University for rural doctors at a cost of $13.2m over three years from 2023–24. 

New hospital-based training posts will also be established at a cost of $5.6m for rural generalists via the John Flynn Prevocational Doctor Program, which is expected to increase the number of doctors gaining rural experience from 800 to 1000 by 2026. 

“This will help build a rural health workforce with the skills needed by their rural communities, such as obstetrics, anaesthetics, surgery, mental health and paediatrics,” said the president of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia Megan Belot. 

Patients living in the bush experiencing psychiatric problems are also winners out of this budget, with Labor moving to restore bulk-billed video telehealth psychiatry consultations at a cost of $47.7m. That measure had been cut by the Morrison government in December last year and had resulted in many psychiatrists ceasing practice in rural areas. 

Labor is also moving to trial new models of care in rural areas that would meet the needs of the community, especially in combating chronic health conditions​. The Innovative Models of Care Program will cost $24.7m. 

Labor has also budgeted $5.6m from 2025 to provide additional rural primary care training rotations for junior doctors. That program has attracted permanent funding from then on at a cost of $11.2m a year.

The Single Employer Model trials now under way will also ​be expanded over the next four years.

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