Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

Congratulations, Deputy President Marshall, on your election to that position. I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Assistant Minister for Health (Senator Nash) and the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to copayments for medical services and to the regulation of financial services.

You would have noticed that Labor senators have been asking Senator Nash questions over many weeks about the impact of the GP tax, the $7 co-payment, and what that means for those using the health system in our country. We will continue to do so because it is important that people understand what this will mean for health consumers in our country. We will also continue to do so because we do not get an explanation or an understanding from either the minister or the government of what this measure will in fact mean. We saw the Treasurer, Mr Hockey, say that the $7 co-payment is just a bit more than the cost of a cup of coffee, a couple of beers. That is not what we are hearing from the health community and health consumers and, again, today we see coverage of the University of Sydney's detailed analysis of what this $7 tax on a GP visit, this $7 tax on diagnostic imaging and this $7 tax on pathology will mean. What will that mean?

That is why I, again, asked a question today: what does it mean for a woman who finds a lump in her breast? She has to go to the doctor. There will be a GP tax on that visit. She will probably need to go to the doctor twice. She will need an ultrasound and a mammogram. She will need to have an ultrasound biopsy, various blood samples and various pathology. It is ascertained that the cost for just finding out what the lump might be is in the vicinity of $90. But, if she then finds out that this is a positive test, there are a range of costs that that woman will have to cover in order to be treated for breast cancer. Minister Nash did not answer those questions. She provided a couple of answers.

First of all, she said that the GP can make the choice. The GP can decide whether or not to pass on those costs. At the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry last Thursday, we asked various witnesses about the likelihood of GPs making decisions not to pass on those costs. I do not recall anyone saying, 'That'll be fine; the GP practice will just cover those costs.' It will mean that, for every item 23 on the MBS, a 20-minute consultation, the doctor would not only receive $5 less but also lose their bulk-billing incentive. The bulk-billing incentive is paid at the rate of $6 for a regular bulk-billed event in a metropolitan area and it is $9 or $10 in rural areas—there was different evidence on this last Thursday. The doctor will not absorb those costs for a 15- or 20-minute consultation. The doctors have said to us very clearly, 'We can't afford to.' So the bulk-billing incentive that is currently in place to encourage people to bulk-bill will now be paid if the doctor does not bulk-bill. The incentive is now applied if the doctor does not bulk-bill the patient. That is, they get the bulk-billing incentive if they actually require the patient to pay the $7 co-payment.

Senator Nash also said that the reason we have to do this is that the health system is unsustainable and that we cannot keep the health system going with the costs it has at the moment. First of all, the AMA, which is fairly well respected in this place, says, 'Frankly, the health system is absolutely sustainable.' Associate Professor Brian Owler, the President of the AMA, has said very clearly that the cost to the health system as a ratio to GDP has not gone up in any way that should be viewed as alarming. It is about the same as it has been over the years. But let us peel back Senator Nash's claim that we have to make the system sustainable.

Any saving as a result of the application of the GP tax does not go back to the health budget. It will not go back into support health service delivery in this country. It is being creamed off and put into the Future Fund that, one day, may or may not do some medical research. So it is not as though the money is going back into better services, more doctors, more nurses; it is being pulled away.

But the more concerning thing is that people might go to the doctors less. That is my real fear: that people will attend the doctor less because they have not got money in their pocket. (Time expired)