Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Assistant Minister for Health (Senator Nash) to questions without notice asked by Senators Peris and McLucas today relating to copayments for medical services.

During the election campaign we heard that there were going to be no changes to Medicare, there were going to be no new taxes. The budget has put an absolute lie to those commitments made by the now Prime Minister during their campaign. Today's question time has confirmed that there are changes to Medicare and there are new taxes that will be imposed on the Australian people.

The chorus of opposition grows to this budget, particularly the health budget. We have had the Rural Doctors Association expressing concerns about what this budget will do to the health of regional, rural and remote Australians, particularly Indigenous Australians.

Today we have seen Associate Professor Brian Owler take what one would think is an unusual action to get his voice heard and that is to write an opinion piece in today's Age. It is an unusual action. I do not speak for Associate Professor Brian Owler, but it must mean that he is finding it difficult to have the views of the AMA heard by this government. It was interesting to note during question time Senator Abetz refer to the AMA as an 'interest group'. I am sure they will be pleased to know that that is the respect that Senator Abetz has for the leading medical organisation in this country. In the article Associate Professor Owler concludes by saying:

The co-payment is unfair and unnecessary. Ideology has pushed this proposal too far. It is poor health policy. The Prime Minister should step in and scrap this policy. If not, it deserves to fail in the Senate.

You could not be clearer, Associate Professor Owler: you do not think a lot of this co-payment. He says it is unfair. That is right—it is a tax on the poor and sick in our country, on the elderly and children, those who use our health system the most. Associate Professor Owler references a patient on warfarin. This issue was also raised with me by a pathology nurse when I was running a street stall recently. She said, 'Patients often have to go daily to have warfarin blood tests, to test whether or not their blood is suitable to take warfarin.'

Associate Professor Owler also says that not all of these patients will be under the cap of 10 co-payments for concession patients. He concludes:

That will mean hundreds of dollars in co-payments.

We also noted his comments that the co-payment will mean that, with regard to a preventative health approach, the use of GPs in particular, people will not go to the doctor in order to achieve good health. He references a woman with a lump in her breast that will mean, on his reckoning, at least $63 for an early detection event. He concludes:

The effects of delayed diagnosis are expensive and often tragic.

This is what the president of the AMA is telling this government. The co-payment is also unfair to doctors, particularly GPs. The budget in fact has turned the principle of bulk-billing on its head. If a doctor bulk-bills now, they will be penalised. They will lose $5 in the Medicare rebate. They will also lose the bulk-billing incentive that is currently provided. This particularly affects pathology and diagnostic imaging, because the bulk-billing incentive applies to all their patients, not just the people who are on the concession payment.

In my final comments I want to go to Professor Owler predicting in his article that Senator Nash would resort to claiming that the health budget is unsustainable. We heard that all through estimates and we heard it today. He says:

The health budget is not out of control. As a proportion of GDP, Australia’s healthcare spending has remained constant. In 2011 it was 8.93 per cent compared to the OECD average— (Time expired)