Meg Lees shovels more dirt on to Medicare's
corpse.
She claims the safety
net for gap payments won't be inflationary and "we have to trust the
doctors".
I know of doctors
who'll gladly help patients reach the safety net threshold in their first
consultation.
On Wednesday, I discovered a patient of mine was being charged consultation gap fees by her psychiatrist that were eating up a quarter of her income.
The Australian
Fri 12.3.04
Dr Andrew Gunn
ON Monday I, along
with other representatives of the medical profession, received a briefing from
the federal Department of Health and Aging on the effects of the
As a result of the
briefing I am extremely concerned that Australians, either as consumers or
taxpayers, are likely to pay significantly more for many medications.
We were informed that
a new review committee will be established to review decisions made by the
Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC). If the review committee
recommends listing of a drug rejected by the PBAC and the drug is not
subsequently listed, there could now be grounds for legal retaliation by the US
Government involving penalties to the Australian Government.
This will inevitably
lead to higher drug costs as a result of listing of unnecessary expensive
drugs, or penalties imposed by the
Also of concern was
the establishment under the FTA of a joint US/Australian
medicines working group to consider further changes to the PBS. We were
ominously informed by the FTA negotiators that the
At the conclusion of
the meeting it was revealing that the Department of Health and Aging could not
guarantee (unlike Trade Minister Mark Vaile) that PBS costs would not rise as a
result of the FTA.
The Australian
Wed 10.3.04
Dr Robert Marr
[ Doctors Reform Society of Australia
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