Knowing in advance what your specialist will charge is a good step forward. But we need fairer fees to start with.
- Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
As negotiations continue, each side is blaming the other for problems in public hospitals. How did we get here?
Whether your GP decides to bulk bill all your visits will depend on on these 6 things.
Not enough is being said by the major parties in the election about critical health care reforms needed to address access, affordability and funding problems.
Fewer than half of Australians are always bulk billed when they see a GP. Labor’s Medicare plan, which the Coalition has promised to match, could turn this around.
The roles of health professionals such as nurses, physiotherapists and psychologists have been frozen for decades. A new review shows how this can change.
Greater payroll taxes for GP clinics means lower profits. Clinics will seek to make up the shortfall in revenue by other means – and this could include reducing the number of patients they bulk bill.
We now have a sensible pathway to improve access to health care, using the skills of nurses, pharmacists and GPs appropriately.
Here’s how we design a fairer pathology system, fit for the 21st century, with no out-of-pocket costs or the public.
While wage rises for aged care workers are welcome, this measure alone will not fix all workforce problems in the sector.
The health care world has changed a lot in 40 years, but Medicare hasn’t. Here are three areas for radical forms to the system that will achieve its aims of universal health care for all Australians.
National Cabinet is meeting today to discuss hospital funding, and the interconnected issues of NDIS reform and GST allocation. But how are hospitals actually funded? And what’s GST got to do with it?
How does Australia’s health care system compare to our peers in the OECD? Here we highlight five charts showing Australia’s relative performance.
In future, Australia will spend much more on aged care. This increased spending needs to be well planned, so access is protected and all older people – regardless of income – get the care they need.
The big news on budget night was a tripling of the bulk-billing incentive. It’s hoped to stem the decline in bulk billing – but it’s unclear if it will increase it.
Medicare access could be restricted to GPs who agree to bulk bill all patients, while allowing those who don’t bulk bill to rely solely on out-of-pocket payments.
The budget gets on with the job of implementing the health policies already promised. But there’s still more to do to get the new government’s policy settings right.
Despite its defeat at the election, the Morrison government’s pandemic legacy is hindering Australia’s ability to manage the pandemic.
While COVID has become less deadly, it has disproportionately claimed the lives of older and poorer Australians. Others have missed out on necessary preventative care during the pandemic.
The rate of very high psychological distress is rising most steeply in the middle aged, especially in middle-aged women on low incomes. New funding should match this need.
Primary care and COVID will be the top two challenges for new government. But the likely ministers have strong credentials.
NT residents receive approximately 30% less Medicare funding per capita than the national average. The gap is worse for First Nations Australians in the NT.
Medicare has been mentioned a lot this election campaign. But what have the major parties actually promised? Five experts grade their policies.
Labor has announced it would introduce urgent care centres to take the pressure off emergency departments if it were elected. Would they work?
Overall, health fared poorly in this year’s budget.
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