A short summary of the key healthcare and GP budget measures that were brought down last night by the government with a few responses from around the sector. Warning, it’s not pretty.
Extending the rebate freeze for another two years until the mid 2020 will cut nearly $1 billion from healthcare spending and the potential take home pay of a a lot of GPs. The budget paper says the savings will be reinvested in health priorities but you can’t see that anywhere in this budget. A tweet from the AMA commented that we were now in a “rebate ice age”.
Ley defended the freeze saying it was “in recognition of the current fiscal environment and the Healthier Medicare reforms that will be designed and trialled over this period, including a new, fairer bundled payment and incentive model for GPs treating chronically ill patients that will no longer rely solely on the fee-for-service Medicare rebate model”.
The RACGP tweeted that the move will force lower socio-economic patients into hospital EDs, so the savings are illusory. Another tweet pointed out that it would potentially create an even greater market for the after hours corporates that are starting to boom creating even far greater potential for waste… Read More>>
