Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for McMillan. One of the issues that I have been confronted with in Shortland electorate is the delays that my constituents have been experiencing with the processing of Medicare claims—or, to be quite honest with you, the delays in actually even contacting Medicare to lodge a claim. When those claims are lodged, a number of them are defaulted. I am reliably advised that 40 per cent of online services are unsuccessful.

I just want to quickly cite two particular cases here. One is Bob Irvine from Swansea. He made the mistake of travelling to the Beaumont Medicare office the day after it had been closed by this government. Since that time, he has been trying to lodge his claim both online and by telephone. He wrote to me at the beginning of April saying that he had great success—he had actually got through to the Medicare line, only to be told, 'We're experiencing large volumes and cannot take your call.' I know that my constituents are not the only ones experiencing this problem. This system is flawed. The system is not working. Constituent after constituent are being disadvantaged. It is particularly bad in Shortland electorate because we have a number of older people living there. It is just totally unacceptable that we have a situation where 40 per cent of all incoming calls result from failure of an online services. I think that the government needs to actually deal with this.

I am just putting another one from a different perspective. He is a doctor who is unable to claim the money that he is entitled to because part of it is private health and part of it is Medicare. He cannot claim the private health part until such time as the Medicare component is completed. The Medicare component cannot be completed because there are too many delays with Medicare. The system is flawed. So this doctor is missing out on two sets of payment, the Medicare payment and the private health insurance payment, because the private health insurance cannot complete the claim.

I call on this government to actually fix this flawed system.