Today Extra: vaping, bulk billing and payroll tax

Transcript: AMA Queensland President, Dr Maria Boulton, Nine, Today Extra with David Campbell and Sylvia Jeffreys, Monday 13 March 2023
Subjects: Vaping, bulk billing, payroll tax

SYLVIA JEFFREYS:   Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced a parliamentary inquiry into the dangers of e-cigarettes, with reports an alarming number of primary school children are becoming hooked.

DAVID CAMPBELL: For more, we are joined by Queensland President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Maria Boulton, in Brisbane. Maria, thanks for coming in. Did we need an inquiry to know this?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Look, no, we didn't. The AMA has been calling for urgent action on vaping for some time now. I'm a mum and we know that vaping is running rampant through our schools. We also know that it is dangerous, the evidence is clear, and all we really need is some urgent action to ensure that our children and teenagers aren't continuously being exposed to vapes.

SYLVIA JEFFREYS:    Well, as you say, there is more information, more data now around the dangers of vaping. What are they specifically for young children?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   And this is a really great point because I don't think that the education piece is coming across to children and teenagers. So vapes, whether they contain nicotine or not, are quite dangerous. They can cause burning to your lungs. They can cause lung disease, they can cause seizures, and we know that people who vape are three times more likely to end up smoking cigarettes.

We also know that if there's a child or a toddler that comes across a vape and swallows the liquid in the vape, it can be quite toxic and even lethal.

DAVID CAMPBELL:  All right. So Victoria's also wanting the government to do something on vaping. It's a massive issue around the country. As you were saying, every parent's worried about this. Why isn't there more education and forefront from the federal government into schools?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   That's a really great question. We've also been calling for increased regulation. We know that there are some laws that make the sale of vapes to children and teenagers illegal. However, we don't believe that they're being enforced in the way that they should be. We heard from the Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk this morning that Queensland will also ask for tobacco retailers that sell vaping products to be licensed, which is a really good first step. But clearly, more needs to be done in this space.

SYLVIA JEFFREYS:    In other medical news this morning, there are concerns a growing number of GPs are being forced to pass on costs to patients as Medicare rebates fail to keep up. How much are patients being priced out?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   It varies. It varies depending where you are and what your costs are. But the reality is that successive Australian federal governments have not indexed that Medicare rebate that you use to see your GP enough to keep up with the cost of providing the services. And GPs have been subsidising that for years.

But now, that gap between what the Medicare rebate is, so your rebate to see your doctor, and the actual cost of providing those services just continues to get larger and larger and larger. And we're at the point where GPs are facing a stark choice between either closing their doors or charging a gap or increasing that gap that they bill.

And that is on the back of the federal government. I mean, when is the federal government going to get the fact that people need GPs? GPs are like a super drug. We keep people healthy and out of hospital. We are the cheapest aspect of the healthcare system, and without a well-supported general practice system, our hospitals will collapse.

DAVID CAMPBELL:    Okay, so this is obviously going to affect vulnerable Australians as well. What do you think the solution is here? Just the government has back it?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Yeah, absolutely. And look, it will absolutely affect those vulnerable people, people with chronic conditions that need to see their GPs for regular reviews. We need the federal government to look at those Medicare rebates, increase them, make sure that those rebates for people who have mental health issues and chronic diseases are up to scratch.

But we also need the support of state governments. It's really essential that state governments look at getting rid of this payroll tax threat. Some state governments are pursuing this payroll tax on patients seeing their GP, and that's just going to make it even more difficult for vulnerable patients to access their GP.

So governments need to step up. GPs for far too long have been subsidising the healthcare of Australians, and we just cannot continue to do it because that gap just keeps growing and growing.

It's about time that both levels of government start caring for the patients in the same way that GPs have.