FEARS are building in regional and medical communities about the long-term impact of the federal government’s planned general practitioner (GP) co-payment on regional health services, which are already severely stretched.
Doctors are concerned the plan will not only affect the livelihoods of regional and rural GPs but also patronage of health care clinics, with rural patients already less likely to go to the doctors due to a range of factors, including travel and finances.
The co-payment plan will see bulk-billed patients make a contribution of $7 to the cost of most visits to the GP, a cost the government says is necessary to tackle the financial issues facing the health system.
Rural Doctors Association of Australia president Ian Kamerman said the co-payment would cost the health system more in the long run.
“The health of the nation makes up 10 per cent of the economy and (the government) needs to remember they are playing with that,” Dr Kamerman said.
He said access to GPs had the biggest positive impact on the health outcomes of a population.
Instead of a system that took money away from GPs and reduced access to general care, Dr Kamerman said he would like to see a system that rewarded quality GPs and quality of practice as well as improving access to GPs.
That also included hospital-based care.
Dr Kamerman said the changes would see many general practices close as it would become an unviable business.
These sentiments were echoed by Opposition health spokesman Stephen Jones, who said the changes would “have a massive impact”.
“It’ll cut the viability of regional medical practices,” Mr Jones said.
“Most rural medical practices are marginal anyway and this will make it even harder to get access to a doctor.”
Mr Jones said people who lived in regional and rural communities were more likely to be on lower incomes than their city counterparts and thus had fewer financial resources to see a GP.
He said the GP co-payment combined with higher prices under the proposed changes in the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS), meant fewer country patients would fill prescriptions.
The changes to the PBS will see general patients pay $5 more per subsidised PBS prescription.
Concessional patients would pay 80 cents more.
A spokesman for Health Minister Peter Dutton said the government was asking all Australians “to make a modest co-payment of $7 when they visited the doctor to strengthen Medicare and keep it sustainable into the future”.
“Just as is the case now, doctors – wherever they practice – will decide what they charge their patients,” he said.
“This has always been and remains at the doctor’s discretion.
“Importantly the government has retained bulk billing so those who cannot afford the $7 co-payment can be bulk billed and doctors remain free to bulk bill patients just as they do now.”
The spokesman said those with concession cardholders and children under 16 would have the $7 contribution capped at 10 visits – after that their treatment would be bulk billed and free.
“Medicare rebates are higher in regional areas than they are in metropolitan areas and this will remain the case.”