Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister inform the House regarding what the government is doing to make Medicare sustainable? Can the minister also inform the House what other examples of co-payments for health services exist in Australia?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for his question and his interest in making Medicare sustainable, because that is exactly what this government wants to do. At the moment there are 263 million free services a year on Medicare. So, when people go to the doctor, four out of five of those services are being provided for free at the moment. We want to make sure that Medicare survives and strengthens over the course of the next generation. The reason that we want to do that is not just that we were left an enormous debt by Labor but also that we have an ageing population and we have huge costs—with medical technologies, personalised cancer medicines and all of those which will have to be paid for over the coming decades.

We introduced a modest co-payment in this budget to make Medicare sustainable and to strengthen it for the future. Why? Because we are the best friends that Medicare has ever had. Jenny Macklin was a great friend of Medicare.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Jagajaga was a great friend of Medicare, because she worked with Brian Howe, the last health minister to introduce a co-payment. We looked at what Labor did otherwise. The honourable member asks whether or not there are other examples of a co-payment and the way in which it operates. There are a couple of examples, as it turns out. One is the PBS. Australians know, the people in the gallery know, that in this country, when you go to the chemist and you see the pharmacist, regardless of how sick you are and regardless of how poor you are, in this country you will pay $6.10 for the first script and each and every script until you get about 60 scripts. So the effective co-payment that Labor introduced when it comes to medicine for the sickest and poorest is about $360. We say that we want to retain bulk-billing in our co-payment proposal. We do that so that we can help the sickest and the poorest. Exactly what we have proposed in this policy, Labor did not do when they introduced a co-payment when it came to the PBS.

Secondly, we have said that for concession card holders and for those people under the age of 16, once you get to 10 services within a year—a maximum of $70—you do not have to pay anymore than that within a 12-month period. Let us contemplate that for a moment. You can go and see a GP on five separate occasions, you can have three blood tests and you can have two x-rays for a maximum amount of $70 within a 12-month period. I believe that is a fair and balanced approach. Labor's approach, as we know with the economy, is to spend the money and worry about the problem afterwards. I know that Labor cannot handle the economy, they cannot handle health and they certainly cannot handle themselves. I am going to have a lot more to say about other co-payment models in future days and weeks ahead.