Doorstop - AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, Parliament House, Canberra - Health Budget 2004-05; medical indemnity; pneumococcal vaccine

GLASSON:    We've seen a consolidation budget in relation to health.

A lot of the initiatives that were announced tonight obviously we knew about and obviously we commend, particularly Tony Abbott and the Prime Minister on the issues around medical indemnity.

On the Medicare Plus issues, we obviously still have concerns about the linkage of the increased Medicare payments to bulk-billing and to geographical rebates.  We feel we'd like to see an increase in Medicare rebates across the board for all Australians and not necessarily targeting very selective members of the community.

From the point of view of the aged care issues, obviously there are good initiatives in that aged care package.  We need to look at it in more detail.  We particularly want to know how it's going to impact on our public hospitals in relation to getting patients out of public hospitals into aged care facilities.  And we'd like to specifically look at these transitional facilities whereby actually patients can access both aged care facilities and move out of public hospitals in a much more smooth way.

So, in a real sense, I suppose health was a low order item tonight but I remind all Australians that the most important thing that any family can have is affordable and accessible health care for themselves and all Australians.  And I suppose that's what we like to target and look and hope that the Government will target in relation to what they have delivered tonight.

I'd like to also indicate that we made a specific push to try and get the pneumococcal vaccine funded.  This was not funded and this represents a major disappointment.

And issues around indigenous health, again, we have concerns about the continuing, I suppose, deterioration of indigenous health in this country.  And though there was some, I suppose, recognition of the need to increase funding in this area, this wasn't specifically delivered tonight and it's something that we want to have on-going discussions with the Government up to the forthcoming election.

QUESTION:   Do you think children will die or be maimed needlessly because of the failure to fund pneumococcal vaccines?

GLASSON:    I think this is a major negative from our point of view.  Obviously, we have pushed very hard to get this pneumococcal vaccine funded.  We know that there's over 4,000 admissions every year from pneumococcal disease.  We know there's a huge number of children who end up with meningitis and the subsequent effects of that can be quite devastating from hearing loss to various forms of cerebral palsy.

And we think this would be a very good investment in the future of all Australians both from the point of view of a social sense, but also from the point of view of a financial sense because it ends up saving the community money rather than actually costing them money.  So it's a very short-term perspective to take, I would suggest.

QUESTION:   So you think it's irresponsible?

GLASSON:    Well I think it's - I don't know irresponsible - I think from the community perspective that I'd like to have seen some of those tax cuts come back into health and particularly fund issues around our vaccination schedule.

This vaccination schedule is about prevention.  There's nothing better in medicine actually than preventing disease in the first place.  So I think you can argue whether it's irresponsible, but I think from a community perspective, they would have liked to have seen some of those tax cuts, as I said, come back into making sure that every child in this country was fully vaccinated for not only pneumococcus but whatever is recommended by the Australian Vaccination Schedule.

QUESTION:   And would you have liked to see more new funding for rural health?

GLASSON:    Look, there were some good initiatives in rural health and obviously we commend the funding of particularly a specialist service in rural areas because, as a person who provides service in those areas, I see the need for specialists are certainly significant.  And I think that those initiatives could be expanded even further to make sure that our people who live in rural and remote areas have appropriate, not only general practice services, but appropriate specialist services as well.

Ends