Proposed Medicare cut threatens to blind 47,000 Australians

Ita Buttrose argues a delay on a proposed Medicare rebate cut will lead to an estimated 47,000 vulnerable Australians going blind — and it’s not good enough.

As we head into a federal election, a proposed Medicare rebate cut that will lead to an estimated 47,000 vulnerable Australians going blind, remains under consideration by the Government since it was tabled in 2019.

Politicians on both sides of the House have remained largely silent on the proposed 69 per cent rebate cut for vital, sight-saving eye injections since it was recommended by the MBS Review Taskforce over two years ago.

It’s hard to fathom why there is a delay on this decision. Australians at risk of losing their vision need certainty.

On behalf of the estimated 1.8 million Australians living with macular disease, I remind all parties in this election that we simply cannot accept an Australia where we have world-class treatment to stop people going blind, yet many thousands of people are already unable to afford it.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) affects the part of our retina that is responsible for central vision and allows us to drive, read, and recognise faces. AMD is the leading cause of severe vision loss and blindness in Australia.

Fifteen years ago, people with the aggressive wet form of AMD – like my father, Charles – were destined to go blind or become severely vision impaired. Often quite rapidly.

That changed with breakthrough treatment administered as regular injections into the eye. Today, Australia is considered a world leader in managing conditions that benefit from this treatment and saving sight.

But this world-leading status – and the sight of thousands of Australians – is under threat by the proposed Medicare rebate cut.

ABC Chairman Ita Buttrose.

Research commissioned by Macular Disease Foundation Australia (MDFA) estimates that the proposed rebate cut would cause out-of-pocket fees for wet AMD patients to balloon from $1,900 to $3,900 a year. Double that if the disease impacts both eyes.

This extra cost burden would increase the treatment dropout rate by 22 per cent, resulting in an estimated additional 47,000 Australians who will experience irreversible severe vision loss or blindness over the next five years. Moreover, this would also affect people with sight threatening complications of diabetes who currently benefit from this treatment.

Adherence to the recommended treatment regime for these patients is critical to retaining vision.

Mike from Sydney is one of the 47,000. He’s 77 and planning to retire and expects to go blind at 80. Once on a pension, Mike says the cost of treatment will be “totally out of the ballpark”. He’s finding it hard to accept that he’ll just have to sit back and lose his sight.

Australians should never have to choose between putting food on the table and going blind but Anne, 64, from Canberra, says pensioners like her face heart-wrenching choices between going hungry or going blind. She knows that if she stops treatment she could suffer the same fate as Alison, from Bega.

Over more than a decade Alison spent her $30,000 life savings to keep her eyesight. She stopped buying new clothes and going on holidays. Then her husband died. With less money and her savings gone, she called it quits. Today, at 93, she’s legally blind and can’t leave the house without help.

Tragically, there will be 47,000 more stories like this if the Government does not reject the proposed Medicare rebate cut. Costs of caring for affected people will rise. Health economists estimate the proposed cut will simply shift costs to other parts of the health and welfare system.

If the next Government accepts the proposed cut to the rebate, taxpayers will have to foot the bill for an extra $168 million in primary health, mental health care and early admission to residential aged care, and indirectly lose a further $2.6 billion in patient and family carer productivity.

Australia simply cannot afford to subsidise the cost of an additional 47,000 vulnerable people losing their vision should the Government decide not to reject the proposed cut in the Medicare Rebate.

Ita Buttrose AC OBE is Patron of Macular Disease Foundation Australia at www.mdfoundation.com.au

Add your voice to the campaign by signing MDFA’s petition against the Medicare rebate cut at www.change.org/47K_Reasons.

Ita Buttrose AC OBE is Patron of Macular Disease Foundation Australia.

Originally published as Proposed Medicare cut threatens to blind 47,000 Australians