longweekend58 wrote on Jan 6
th, 2015 at 7:51am:
Do you know the first govt in decades to reduce spending in actual terms was THIS ONE?
Yes but is that a good thing or bad.
I suppose that depends on what they reduced spending on.
Quote:Most people seem unaware that on January 19, the Medicare rebate for a GP consultation lasting 6-10 minutes will fall from $37.05 to $16.95, and then down to $11.95 from July 1.
I am a GP. Sometimes I can resolve a patient's problem in less than 10 minutes. This is usually because of the fact that I know a particular patient or family very well, because our practice provides continuity of care, and because we have years of education, experience, and hard work behind us. Occasional shorter consultations provide a much-needed opportunity to reduce the waiting room back-log while still offering high-quality care.
Forty per cent of my billings go directly to my practice to cover staff wages and their entitlements, rent, accreditation, supplies, etc. None of these costs will drop despite the rebate falling 54 to 67 per cent over the next six months. This is an intolerable insult to the practice of family medicine.
GPs earn considerably less than other medical specialists and yet we are crucial to cost-effective healthcare. It beggars belief that I should use my experience and decision-making capabilities, and expose myself to medico legal risk for $11.95. I cannot do it. And it is unfair to expect families to be able to absorb the huge gap that will be necessary to keep medical practice viable – especially with further reductions for the 10-20 minute consultation planned for July, and the freezing of all these reduced rebates until 2018. Is this really the kind of health care system we want?
Dr Jennifer Sterrett Turramurra
Plenty of money for dud planes though
chosen and supported by both parties well before Abbott came along.
Plenty of money to monitor the media
that was labors doing or did you forget, plus they wanted to censor the media.
How much for this increasemypolls jaunt to Iraq
hmmm How often did Rudd and Gillard do this?
But then again when the poor get sick they deserve it right?
Which party increased govt spending on hospitals by NOT ONE DOLLAR while they managed to spend almost $300B on... who knows?
if you want to lay blame, start by laying blame where it is due. State govts run hospitals and are dreadful at it. Govts of both persuasions have given increased grants to hospitals only to see no bed increases and instead an increase in bureaucracy instead. It is just like universities where increasing funding simply increases staff not front-line services. Rudd found the same thing with his simplistic view on hospital reform. He quickly found out that hospitals are almost a lost cause because it doesn't matter how much money you throw at them - nothing changes.
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