Media Conference - Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President, Canberra
- PHELPS: Well, thanks for coming in. I think it's important to clarify some of the issues related to the Budget last night and, having had a chance to have a look at it in a little bit more detail overnight, I have to say that the health budget didn't get any better overnight - and we are still concerned about a number of major issues that appear to have been neglected. The main ones that we think should have had a lot more attention, which, basically had none or little, are public hospital funding, aged care places, Indigenous health, and real advances for general practice. There is also no indication of any increase in expenditure for rebates for patients to see specialists. So, the ultimate outcome of all of this is that patients' gaps will increase and it will be harder for people to get into public hospitals, and that it will be harder for people to get into aged places. And while this, overall, appears to be an economically responsible budget with, I think, the Howard Government looking at a healthy economy - and certainly having people in work and employed and financially secure is a very important part of health overall - if we look at the specifics of the health budget we think that it's missed on a number of very major points.
JOURNALIST: ……
PHELPS: The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for General Practice is the forum through which the Minister is now funnelling all negotiations and all discussions about the funding for general practice and GP patients' rebates. Now, unfortunately, the MOU does not have the support of the profession. So, the Minister is talking to the wrong groups - he is only talking to groups that he funds, those being the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, and the Australian Divisions of General Practice - the ADGP and the RACGP. Recent surveys have shown that 90 per cent of GPs want the AMA to be conducting negotiations with the Government on financing - that's not happening at the moment. The Minister is, in fact, ignoring the constructive advice of the AMA and talking to the other groups and it does not have the support of the profession - those groups do not have a mandate. And, I think, that the future of the MOU would have to be under a major cloud and, I think, that if it is underpinning the Minister's future responses to general practice issues then he's on the wrong track.
JOURNALIST: What more……?
PHELPS: I had a meeting this morning with the Rural Doctors Association and they are reviewing their position.
JOURNALIST: …any timeframe?
PHELPS: I can't give you a timeframe on that - that's up to them.
JOURNALIST: Were you surprised that there wasn't a measure to do with specialist rebates…?
PHELPS: Well, I can't say I'm surprised. But, we're certainly disappointed because without an acknowledgment of Relative Value Study (RVS), which looked at rebates right across all of the specialties, including general practice and the other specialities - without an implementation of that study, patients' gaps are going to increase and the no-gap and known-gap, much trumpeted no-gap and known-gap products of the last year, are going to become worthless pieces of paper for people who have paid for them because the gaps are going to continue to increase.
JOURNALIST: Wooldridge seemed to pave the way for a further response to ……
PHELPS: Yes, I will. I have meetings coming up within the next few weeks with the Shadow Treasurer.
JOURNALIST: You previously mentioned differential rebates. Is that another option?
PHELPS: Yes, I think that the Australian public will see that rebates are increasingly deficient in terms of meeting their needs for appropriate health care and if people are finding it difficult, particularly disadvantaged people are finding it difficult to find affordable health care, then I think there will be a great demand for something to be done. And one idea that we have put forward before, over the last twelve months, is the idea of differential rebates for people in disadvantaged circumstances. I think that that will help to put some social justice into the equation when it comes to deficient Medicare rebates.
JOURNALIST: On the five areas, too, that you mentioned including diabetes and asthma, will that counter the effect of the Government's measure for patients?
PHELPS: One of the big concerns that we have about these programs that have been announced is that they look like they are going to be very administratively heavy. And I think the last thing that GPs want is for funding to go into more and more bureaucracy and, certainly, initiatives like the asthma management and the diabetes register look like they are going to be quite top-heavy in terms of their bureaucracy and the administration involved with them. I would have to question how much of that money is actually going to be filtering through to grassroots GPs to address the viability of their practices and through to the patients in terms of their rebates for care.
JOURNALIST: Are there incentives for the screening …?
PHELPS: Once again, light on detail. There's no question that preventing cervical cancer is an important issue, just as identifying and managing diabetes and asthma are very worthy objectives. It's a matter of whether the way these are carried out is actually effective. And, I think that there is very much a case for pilot programs so that these large amounts of money are not spent on unproven or worthless programs that do not have a positive patient outcome.
Ends