Daniel Hurst, political correspondent Thursday 15 January 2015
Health minister Sussan Ley says changes are ‘off the table’ and she will now consult doctors on options for Medicare
Sussan Ley says the changes will no longer come into effect on Monday. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP
The federal government has shelved its controversial plan to cut Medicare rebates next week, after facing a political backlash and the likelihood of a Senate defeat.
The health minister, Sussan Ley, announced on Thursday that the proposed $20 cut to rebates for short consultations with GPs had been taken “off the table” four days before it was due to take effect.
Labor seized on the “embarrassing backflip” as evidence the government’s health policy was “a complete shambles”, while doctors described it as “a win for common sense”.
The government will no longer proceed with Monday’s scheduled cut to the Medicare rebate for GP consultations shorter than 10 minutes – a measure that would have saved about $1bn over four years.
But it still plans to implement less immediate changes, including a $5 reduction to the rebate for adult non-concession patients in July, a cost that GPs are likely to pass on. The government also intends to extend a freeze on indexation of Medicare rebates, meaning it will make no increases to keep pace with inflation until at least July 2018.
Ley’s spokesman said the government remained committed to those two measures “but we’re committed to consulting the medical sector about them” – an apparent sign that other changes were possible.
Ley, who cut short her annual leave to deal with the backlash, said she was “deeply concerned by the misinformation that is causing confusion for patients and confusion for doctors”.
“As a result, I’m announcing today that the changes to level A and B Medicare consultation items will not commence on Monday as planned,” she said in Melbourne.
“The government is taking them off the table. However, it remains critical that we implement changes to ensure quality care for Australians and a secure future for Medicare.
Ley said she would now consult doctors and others “to come up with sensible options to deliver appropriate Medicare reform”.
Ley said she would be guided by four principles: protecting Medicare for the long term, ensuring bulk billing remained for vulnerable and concessional patients, maintaining high quality care for all Australians, and “a price signal of a modest co-payment into the health system for those who have the capacity to pay”.
She said she would consult the sector on how to address challenges such as “six-minute medicine” – an issue the government had previously argued justified cutting rebates for short visits.
The Australian Medical Association had accused Ley’s predecessor, Peter Dutton, of failing to consult GPs.
The regulation – made by Dutton before Ley assumed the health portfolio last month – would have reduced by about $20 the Medicare rebate that applied to consultations shorter than 10 minutes.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said on Wednesday he would move a disallowance motion at the earliest opportunity, which seemed likely to have the numbers to pass the Senate.
This raised the possibility GPs would have had to adapt to the changes for a short period before reverting to previous arrangements after the Senate veto.
Asked whether the government was postponing the cut, Ley said: “No, the changes to level A and B scheduled to begin on Monday are off the table.”
Ley said since being sworn in as minister she had “had a lot of contact with doctors, with patients, with the community generally and with my colleagues who having gone home to their various electorates for the summer break have talked to the medical practices that they represent and reflected that concern back to me”.
“People often think you send the health minister an email she never reads it. In fact I’ve read an awful lot over the last fortnight … I’ve heard, I’ve listened and I’m deciding to take this action now,” she said.
Shorten said Ley’s decision to scrap Monday’s measure was a “big win for patients, and a victory for all those who support Labor in standing up for our universal health system”.
“Despite backing down on their savage cut to the Medicare rebate, the government has recommitted to its GP tax [due to begin in July],” Shorten said. “This latest shambles shows Tony Abbott cannot be trusted with Medicare. The only way to defeat the GP tax is to defeat the Abbott government.”
The national president of the Doctors Reform Society, Dr Con Costa, told the ABC: “It is definitely a significant victory, but by no means the end of the battle to maintain Medicare.”
The AMA president, Brian Owler, said local GPs and patients had “inundated” MPs with complaints about the initial changes to short consultation rebates, and he believed the level of concern had taken the government by surprise.
Owler said there was now time to talk to the minister about the government’s other proposed changes such as the extended freeze on indexation of Medicare rebates.
Earlier on Thursday the AMA had called on the government to “bow to common sense” and withdraw the planned changes before they took effect.
The Queensland premier, Campbell Newman, who will face voters at a state election in two weeks, also distanced himself from the changes on Thursday.
Even supporters of the policy argued the government should delay the start date until after the Senate vote to avoid disruption.
Terry Barnes, a former health policy adviser to Abbott and the author of a submission proposing a GP co-payment in late 2013, said the prime minister should defer the measures until March Barnes said such a move would allow the government to explain why the changes were needed.
“I think the government has actually put some smart policy on the table but they’ve basically left a vacuum that the AMA, Labor and others have filled,” he said.
The changes to rebates for short consultations were part of the government’s “plan B” for Medicare, after Abbott and Dutton conceded in December that the budget policy to introduce a co-payment would not pass the Senate.
The Greens senator Richard Di Natale called on Ley to rule out proceeding with the $5 co-payment. He said charging patients more to access health care would lead Australia towards a US-style system
