Australian federal govt scraps planned $7 GP co-payment - Polidicks

[url]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-09/federal-government-dumps-gp-co-payment/5955012?pfm=ms[/url] [quote]The plan to charge patients an extra $7 GP fee has been scrapped by the Federal Government. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced the contentious budget proposal will be dropped. "There will be no change to bulk billing for children under 16, for pensioners, for veterans, for people in nursing homes and other aged care institutions," Mr Abbott said.[/quote] If you visit your general practitioner here in Australia and you're part of our optional universal healthcare scheme, Medicare completely covers the cost of the visit less any 'gap' fees - when the GP charges more than what they receive as a rebate from Medicare, which is then paid for by the patient. The plan (I believe) was that $7 would be charged to patients every time they visited their GP, on behalf of Medicare, even if the GP already charges a gap fee (which would stack). This new change reduces the rebate GPs can receive by $5, so they can either suck it up or cover that loss by increasing the gap fee they charge. Hopefully I got all that right.

Pretty sure asshole money-hungry GPs will pass on the $5 to patients to cover for the $5 that Medicare isn't giving them. I can see that sort of thing happening in low socio-economic areas.

the fight isnt over yet tony thinks people are just going to sit down now

Joe Hockey and his hair-brain Medicare schemes . Good thing people have more sense than to listen to him. He's like a used car salesman.

[QUOTE=Bradyns;46673900]Pretty sure asshole money-hungry GPs will pass on the $5 to patients to cover for the $5 that Medicare isn't giving them. I can see that sort of thing happening in low socio-economic areas.[/QUOTE] Regardless, it's still less than the proposed $7 co-payment and this actually goes to improve the immediate budget situation, un-like where the revenue from the proposed co-payment would go into the medical research fund and not actually directly help the budget. It still sucks but then again, often my GP charges a gap fee of around $15, and having him charge $20 won't make a great difference to me anyways.

[QUOTE=Antdawg;46675750]Regardless, it's still less than the proposed $7 co-payment and this actually goes to improve the immediate budget situation, un-like where the revenue from the proposed co-payment would go into the medical research fund and not actually directly help the budget. It still sucks but then again, often my GP charges a gap fee of around $15, and having him charge $20 won't make a great difference to me anyways.[/QUOTE] Pretty damn sure it's a good thing the co-payment went towards medical research and not the budget "situation". But to be fair it shouldn't have existed all together. There are better places to make money from... like all these international companies evading tax that have just been left unchecked.

aren't they going around this law by charging other people $5 if the GP's want to