Category Archives: Medicare Australia

Vulnerable Australians missing out on healthcare as insufficient Medicare rebate drives GP shortage

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Fee-for-service funding model cannot keep up with cost of complex primary care needs, community organisations say

Vulnerable Australians are missing out on adequate healthcare because the Medicare rebate is failing to keep up with the costs of providing services, leading to a critical GP shortage, community health organisations say.

Not-for-profit community health organisation Cohealth has not been able to operate its street doctor service in Melbourne’s CBD – which provides a GP to people sleeping rough – for more than nine months, because it cannot find a doctor to work there.

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Pregnant women increasingly left out of pocket by Medicare antenatal consultations, doctors say

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Peak GPs body calls for Medicare rebate to be extended to cover growing complexity of care for expectant mothers

Expectant mothers are unable to afford some antenatal consultations, the peak body representing GPs says, as doctors call on the federal government to raise the Medicare rebate.

Dr Karen Price, the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, says there have been significant advances in antenatal care over the years but Medicare patient rebates had not kept pace with the costs of providing it.

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‘Like hunting for unicorns’: Australians on the search for adequate, affordable mental healthcare

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Countless inquiries have found the same problems afflicting the mental health system, but cost and access barriers still leave those seeking and providing care in despair

Many Australians experience the country’s mental health system as inadequate, dangerous and financially punishing, saying they often feel unsafe in hospitals, are dismissed by health professionals and are hit with prohibitive costs that government subsidies do not come close to covering.

And practitioners in turn have spoken of burnout and their frustration with misplaced funding, inadequate quick fixes, overmedication of patients and inconsistencies and duplication in the system, while acknowledging that many seeking help find the system “deeply traumatic”.

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Abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many Australian women | Gina Rushton

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A dearth of political leadership means abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many women

It has been 24 years since the federal government chose the partial privatisation of Telstra over the rights of Australian women to safely terminate a pregnancy with abortion drugs. In 1996, anti-abortion independent Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Senate, agreed to support John Howard’s one-third float of the telecommunications company if the government amended legislation to give the health minister veto to prohibit the import, manufacture or use of abortion drug RU486 (mifepristone).

A perpetual dearth of political leadership in the subsequent quarter century has meant the drugs remain inaccessible, unaffordable and at times unsafe for many women in Australia outside of a certain income or major city.

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More than 2.5 million people have opted out of My Health Record

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New figures show that during the three-month extension about 1.4 million people opted out

More than 2.5 million Australians have opted out of the My Health Record system, new figures show.

The figures, revealed in Senate estimates on Wednesday, show almost one in 10 Australians eligible for Medicare have opted out of the controversial system.

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