Government dumps co-payment

The AMA has welcomed the Government’s announcement last week that the $5 cut to the Medicare rebate was off the table. This is something that the AMA has been arguing against for some time. AMA President A/Prof Brian Owler said, “What we really need to be discussing in this country is how we actually invest in general practice. How we rebuild general practice.” 

The second element of the co-payment proposal that remains is the freeze to indexation, which extends out to 2018. “This is an issue for not only for general practice but for specialist practice, private health insurance participation, the public hospital system, and for the out of pocket expenses of patients and so I think there's a lot of work that we need to do there,”A/Prof Owler said.