Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Health Insurance Amendment (Administration) Bill 2020. This bill makes minor amendments to the Health Insurance Act 1973 to improve administrative processes under Medicare. The bill's main provision is to remove an annual requirement to remake the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Passage of the Legislation Act 2003 made this process redundant because up-to-date versions of all legislative instruments are now published on the Federal Register of Legislation. The government assures us that these minor changes will not impact Medicare patients or providers and they relate solely to government processes, so this bill is uncontroversial and Labor will be supporting it.

But this bill does nothing about the bigger problem in Medicare, which is the record out-of-pocket costs. The government's own data shows what Australians already know—that the cost of seeing a doctor has never been higher than under Mr Scott Morrison. The average out-of-pocket fee to see a GP is now $39, up $10, or more than a third, under this government. When the government proposed a $7 GP tax in the 2014 budget, GPs and their patients rightly revolted, but after Labor blocked that increase the government imposed the Medicare freeze. As Treasurer, Mr Scott Morrison personally extended the freeze by two years. Even though the freeze has now ended, it continues to hurt Australians because it has shifted more of the cost of seeing a GP onto patients. The government has now more than achieved its policy intent. It wanted a $7 GP tax and it has presided over a $10 increase. The increase is even worse for visits to specialists. The average specialist out-of-pocket fee is now $88, up a staggering $30, or more than half, under this government. Of course, these are only averages; many patients are forced to pay much more.

These costs have real impacts, particularly at a time when millions of Australians have lost jobs or income. Even before the Morrison recession, 564,000 Australians a year were forced to delay or avoid seeing a GP because they couldn't afford it. Another 579,000 Australians were forced to skip seeing a specialist. The government's own Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that, all told, 1.3 million Australians a year are forced to skip Medicare services. Of course, that burden doesn't fall equally; it hurts some people much more than others. To take one example, people in south-eastern New South Wales in the electorates of Gilmore and Eden-Monaro are twice as likely to skip care as people in northern Sydney. So Labor will support this bill, but we urge the government to admit and address the bigger problems in Medicare, particularly out-of-pocket costs.