Turnbull's "co-payment by stealth" in mid year budget - AMA

Turnbull is now showing his true colours.

Despite huge pressure from Paris to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, he hasn't touched them. Despite the latest Lieberal budget emergency of dire doom and desperate measures aplenty needed. One must wonder, if nothing else, just how committed the Turnbull gov is to dealing with climate change.

He hasn't touched negative gearing on housing, which has seen Australian property markets inflated beyond any reasonable measure of affordable housing and put this most basic of human needs in the hands of speculators.

He hasn't touched superannuation tax breaks for the wealthy, which over time is now costing the gov $billions as rich investors park money in their super accounts to avoid paying the progressive rate of tax they would normally do.

He has however made abundant noises about raising the Goods and Services Tax; a regressive tax that takes proportionally much more of the poor's income than it does the well off.

And he has, in this latest mid year budget, slashed health spending for the masses. As Greens leader Di Natale put it in an email:

It’s a budget that goes after the sick, the poor and elderly; while still throwing money at big mining, big coal and funding a 'Windfarm Commissioner.'

Yesterday’s budget update makes it clear that transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards a new, clean and fairer economy is the furthest thing from the government’s mind.

Part of the cuts to health are a scrapping of an incentive payment to pathologists and medical imaging. The gov reckons the payment (introduced by Labor) hasn't worked and to remove it would make no difference because competition bla. That remains to be seen. Whatever the case, it means a cut to payments and a reduction in income for these specialists. One must wonder how competition would work in small rural sectors when there's only one pathologist or X-Ray place in town.

One of the most shocking things about it is that even for concessional patients such as I, the incentive payment has been scrapped for pathology services. Does the gov expect pensioners to also come up with cash every time they get a blood test done? If so where is this money supposed to come from? There's no mention of increased pension payments to cover it. 

The Australian Medical Association has called it a "co-payment by stealth" and is encouraging the senate to block the measures. 

Similarly, Ms Ley said Labor's incentive payment for bulk billing of diagnostic imaging, introduced from 2009-10 at a cost of $1.3 billion over five years, had failed to increase bulk-billing rates beyond expected "natural growth". However, data shows the proportion of bulk-billed diagnostic imaging services increased from 66 per cent in 2008-09 to 77 per cent last year. 

"We do not expect the changes to affect the majority of consumers due to the high level of competition in the sector, and will ensure some of these services are better aligned with other medical and health providers, such as GPs," Ms Ley said. 

"Patients with high out-of-pocket medical costs will also continue to be covered by the Medicare Safety Net protections." 

The change means that from July, no pathology service will attract an incentive payment, which could lead to services charging extra out-of-pocket fees. For diagnostic imaging, the bulk-billing incentive will only be paid for concession patients, such as pensioners and children under 16. A separate MRI incentive payment for bulk billing concession patients will be reduced from 100 per cent of the Medicare fee to 95 per cent. 

President of the AMA Brian Owler said the policy would increase costs for Australians, particularly the sickest and poorest patients. 

"These measures are simply resurrecting a part of the government's original ill-fated co-payment proposal from the 2014 budget ... It is yet another co-payment by stealth," Professor Owler said. 

"The AMA strongly opposes the measures and will encourage the Senate to disallow them." 

The president of the Royal College of Pathologists Australasia, Michael Harrison, said new co-payment fees could cause some patients to not have tests done. 

"This could have untold effects across healthcare, including: delaying the effective early diagnosis of cancer leading to premature deaths; compromising the effective treatment of diabetes and chronic diseases; and threatening the services of rural pathology," he said. sydneymorningherald  

WTF does this quote mean?