Interview - AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, with ABC Radio 'The World Today' - Medical indemnity crisis

NOLAN:           Tony Abbott's olive tree is wilting by the day.  Even though, ......  exempt by paying the IBNR levy for the next year and a half, under the moratorium, are still threatening on mass.  This time, more than half of the 40 ear, nose and throat surgeons in Queensland, have today offered their resignations to the state's public hospitals.

And Chair of the Ear, Nose and Throat Society of Queensland, Dr Sharon Kelly, says that's because the Federal Government has offered them no certainty in medical indemnity.

KELLY:          Their time frame is too slow.  They're talking about taking in the order of eighteen months - that simply isn't fast enough because there are ongoing cost increases over that time and secondly, because they're not really offering to make those meaningful reforms to the bigger picture.  We're not just talking about the levy - the levy is just a small part of the big problem.

NOLAN:          Another 55 specialists from Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital are understood to have voted to resign, last night, along with at least one paediatric neurosurgeon from Westmead Hospital.   And Dr Kelly says more procedural specialists in Queensland are looking likely to follow.

KELLY:          There are meetings happening today on the Gold Coast of the local medical association, down there.  There are a number of another scheduled meetings where, you know, both individuals and groups are expressing their despair, almost, of the situation and the future.

NOLAN:          Reports in the major Sydney newspaper, today, quote figures from the Commonwealth Health Department which confirm that 23,000 of the 38,000 GPs have been charged $1000 or less and therefore will have to pay the IBNR levy, despite the eighteen month moratorium.

A spokesman for Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, couldn't confirm these figures, but a spokeswoman for Assistant Treasurer Senator Helen Coonan says the Government has been saying all along 80 per cent of doctors would be charged less than $1500 under the levy. 

Australian Medical Association President, Dr Bill Glasson says the figures are no surprise.

GLASSON:    We have said over and over again, that those figures were wobbly, and that's why the doctors were very reluctant to put any sort of money, as I said, into this black hole.  And I suppose the message to the Government, today is, 'go and fix the whole system.'

NOLAN:        So, what value the moratorium?

GLASSON:    The moratorium, on it's own, is worth nothing unless we can come up with a major structural change to the way indemnity is handled in this country.

NOLAN:        Dr Glasson will be meeting Tony Abbott, again tomorrow, in the hope doctors can be offered something to stop them resigning.

GLASSON:    The reality of what has to happen, Tania, is that this remodelling has to cause a downward pressure on premiums.  Doctors cannot continue to pay $100,000 plus for medical indemnity premiums.  This is outside the medical insurance levy. 

NOLAN:        The Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott has been appealing to doctors not to go through with their threats to resign, saying that the Government is actively working with them to fix this crisis, but today, we're actually seeing another 20 or more surgeons in Queensland threatening to walk out.  Why isn't the AMA appealing to doctors just to stay put until you can lock something in with the Government?

GLASSON:    We can't direct them, one way or the other.   We can only give them the facts of the case and facts of what's being offered and, if what's being offered is not enough to actually, I suppose, convince them there will be a downward pressure on premiums in the long term and give us an affordable and secure system, then, I'm afraid they will just vote with their feet.  So, I think that, hopefully, out of tomorrow's meeting I can actually go back to them and say, listen, we are moving down a path that actually will guarantee an outcome that will effect affordability and will effect your long term future, then I think they will reconsider.  But, at the moment, we haven't offered them much, apart from sort of, some vague promises.

Ends