Doorstop - AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, Parliament House, Canberra - Meeting with Federal Health Minister; withdrawal of IBNR levy notices;establishment of a committee to fully investigate the medical indemnity problem
GLASSON: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Look, we've just had another meeting with the Minister. Can I suggest to you that it was again a fruitful meeting. Open and frank discussion once again.
I can tell you that first of all we have agreement on the problem, agreement on the extent of this problem. And more importantly, agreement on the importance of getting a quick solution to this problem. And I think that's what the community and certainly that's what the medical profession are asking for.
I must reiterate that, coming out of this, the meeting this morning, there is agreement on this task force to be set up, on this expert committee to be set up. And I'm pleased to announce that the Minister himself is going to chair it. This sends a very important signal to the profession out there, that this is not going to be some sort of bureaucratically heavy process, that this committee will have strict terms of reference and that we will report as of the 10th of December.
And I think that that will give the profession confidence that, if the Minister himself actually leads this committee, that it will totally deliver the outcomes that we want and those outcomes are around providing affordable services in medicine in this country and also importantly providing security and sustainability for the medical profession. And it's on those two areas that this committee is going to target.
I'd like to refer to a model of insurance called Claims Incurred Insurance and this is what we're trying to, I suppose, redevelop where doctors who take out insurance are covered for all their life. In other words, that they're covered in retirement, covered at death and certainly during disability. And this is one of the major areas that the profession has had concerns about, the fact they do not have security in that area.
And so, part of the brief of this committee will be to look at a model which returns us to a claims incurred-type system which will overcome a lot of the patch-up that's been going on to try and patch this system, as I say, that's unsustainable. And with those structural reforms and obviously some financial underpinning, we hope we will get this off the front page.
QUESTION: Have you urged role of the Prime Minister yesterday perhaps taking a harder line on some matters than the Minister. Is that the way you saw it?
GLASSON: Well, obviously the Prime Minister has significant input and that's his role. He's the Prime Minister, and I would expect him to do that. But I would suggest to you that, if we can deliver to the Prime Minister by Christmas a workforce that's going to preserve to the next decade, that will allow doctors to do the high risk procedures that they traditionally have not been able to do, that will attract young doctors into areas medicine that traditionally they have not been, and that all those constituents out there who really are trying to access general practice services that are vastly - quickly disappearing, if I can guarantee them that workforce, then I think the Prime Minister will want to move ahead on whatever the recommendations that this committee come up with.
QUESTION: Thank you very much.
GLASSON: Can I just make a brief comment about - there was a comment in the paper this morning about Peter Costello sort of saying this is a doctors' problem and you know the Government has sort of come in and sort of saved the day. Can I suggest this is an international problem. It's really got little to do with the collapse of UMP. The collapse of UMP was just a symptom of an insurance system around the world that had been collapsing, and so I think comments trying to sort of target this as being a doctors' problem created by doctors.
It's an insurance problem that has been international and it's also been a legal problem, as I say, a legal system that has been out of control. So I think comments in that context are not helpful, and I'd suggest that what it's all about is leadership and I would suggest to you that, at the moment, the big L or the Leader at the moment is Mr Abbott in trying to demonstration leadership in this area.
And so I would suggest that any comments along those lines are not helpful to the process, and certainly not helpful in developing an outcome that's in the interests of this Government, and more importantly, in the interests of the population at large.
Thank you.
Ends