Addressing a press conference at Parliament House last week, AMA President, Professor Stephen Robson warned pf the growing impact of the Medicare freeze.
PROFESSOR STEVE ROBSON: I'm here this morning to launch the AMA's General Practice component of our Budget submission ahead of the Australian Federal Budget of May this year.
Current encumbered government has inherited a terrible situation. Over successive governments before this one, there was a Medicare freeze that lasted almost a decade. Since the freeze was lifted, the indexation, increases in the rates of rebates patients receive from the MBS has increased at a snail's pace and that's left us in a situation where the rebates available for patients no longer reflect the cost of providing that care.
We estimate since the beginning of the MBS freeze, close to $4 billion of funding has been lost from general practice around the country, and that's funding that goes to Australian patients who are seeing doctors. The result of the $4 billion cut to funding that the government has inherited is a situation where Australia's most vulnerable patients have trouble affording and accessing general practice.
We know that general practice is the most efficient part of the healthcare system in Australia. Every other component is more costly as a greater economic effect, so it makes sense to reinvest the money that was taken out of general practice into general practice.
The Premiers and Chief Ministers around the country understand and get this because they know that when vulnerable Australians with chronic health problems for example can't get the general practice that they need. They will have no other option than to go to Australia's public hospitals. That's thrown Australia's public hospitals into a logjam and led to enormous backlogs in care, in ramping, and problems in emergency department access.
The AMA has come up with a series of costed proposals to deal with this in ways that we can reinvest this $4 billion that's been stripped out of general practice funding. We're looking at making general practice more affordable in aged care and more accessible in aged care.
We're looking at general practice being available and funded later in the day out of hours for Australians who can't access it during the day. And we've also put together proposals on chronic wound care where modest investments by the government will have an enormous economic benefit that will pay off. We've put these proposals to the government and we're looking for the government to do the right thing and reinvest the money that's been stripped out by previous governments in the May Budget.
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Medicare freeze has stripped close to $4b from general practice (Australian Medical Association)
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