Comment on One million Australians missing specialist doctor appointments due to cost, report finds
Joshi@aussie.zone 1 week ago
IMO there needs to be some regulation around this, a simple measure would be to tie Medicare payments to a pricing structure(eg. a specialist can only charge the Medicare rebate + 20%).
If a specialist wants to charge more then that’s fine but the patient(or insurance) will have to pay the full cost
I second this, but make it +0% or else 100% private.
Honestly, we need most medicos to be employees, and they can start a union to keep conditions and pay appropriate.
Our subsidy system is just funneling money into practice owner’s pockets, who set prices based on supply and demand, which is a fucked way to run a healthcare system.
Let’s just pay the average medico more, while skipping all the profits were subsidising.
ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Seeing a professor for a complex health issue: $600
Medicare rebate: $80
Private health: $0
Medicare needs to do a LOT better for that to work
Joshi@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Yes, obviously medicare would need to increase the rebate and private insurance fees would necessarily increase(as they would now be actually paying for care rather than acting a a gatekeeping mechanism)
Rebate for a short consult with a specialist is $81.55, a long consult is $236.65.
The title professor indicates that they hold a teaching position and says nothing about their clinical skill. Plenty of specialists take the piss leverage the title to charge ridiculous fees.
In my experience as a GP a reasonable standard fee for a specialist is around $300 with $80 back from Medicare. So yes the Medicare rebate would need to increase substantially but I doubt more than we will save when AUKUS falls through. It is within the capacity of a government with the right priorities. Also increasing the availability of public specialists would be a good companion policy.
makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
All we need to do is tax the miners, and put the money toward healthcare, and whatever else we want with the money left over.
Joshi@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Nationalise the mines and be done with it
ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Would be great if they put it down as a long consult, I was there for quite a while with three “fellows” each checking me too. I was referred to a leading university clinic from a specialist ($$$ again) but I am sure there are plenty of profs or similar gouging because of an academic title
Joshi@aussie.zone 1 week ago
To be clear most professors are senior in their field and usually indicates research as well as teaching, I was in a cantankerous mood this morning. But regardless Medicare needs to take access to specialist treatment seriously.
MisterFrog@aussie.zone 5 days ago
Part of the problem is that private health exists, but it can’t cover you for anything other than hospital.
“Extras” aren’t really insurance, it’s a incentive scheme but you basically pay whatever you’re using at cost.
The solution here is not to allow private health to cover the gap between Medicare and the out of pocket cost. The solution is to say, if you charge more than the rebate then it’s 100% private, you won’t get a cent of Medicare.
Watch as private healthcare absolutely bottoms out because they’ll actually have to cover the whole cost, and therefore premiums will rise like crazy.
How we we afford this? We’re already affording it. We subsidise private health, we pay insurance premiums. If you can convince people: oh hey, want cheaper health insurance? Oh hey, what’s this? You can pay LESS in universal healthcare than you do in premiums!
Lots of people would go for it. A lot of us have private health insurance because of how the incentives are currently set up. We don’t want it. Before the tax concessions no one wanted it.
You’d have to couple it with a massive investment in Medicare, completely removing all tax concessions for private health (which they should have never implemented in the first place). Better pay for medicos.
But we can damn well afford it now, just that it’s politically difficult, especially with the corporate media, and everyone wanting taxes to go down (which I personally think is dumb as fuck).
We need to put private health in the bin where I belongs. Hybrid systems are shit.