Greens push for Medicare budget boost


The Greens will push to restore the $664 million that Labor cut from Medicare in this year's federal budget.

The policy move is backed by the Australian Medical Association, with federal president Steve Hambleton to attend the policy launch in Alderley in Brisbane's north on Wednesday morning.

In May, Mr Hambleton warned that the cuts to Medicare would hurt families.

"Cuts to Medicare rebates and changes to Medicare safety nets inevitably increase out of pocket costs for medical care," Mr Hambleton said before the budget.

“Any short term budget gain for the government translates to financial pain for patients and downstream costs for the health system if early diagnosis and treatment is delayed."

Queensland Greens Senator Larissa Waters said Labor's decision to cut the $664 million over three years was wrong.

"We think that cutting Medicare, while refusing to fix the mining tax is a really sad indictment on the priorities of the government," Senator Waters said.

"The cuts were basically a delay of the indexation of payments, of the rebates.

"And we are worried that this will mean - and what we are hearing anecdotally from doctors already - is that they will have to pass the costs on, or it will act as a disincentive to bulk billing."

Senator Waters said doctors have told the Greens that it would have the impact of increasing the "out of pocket" expenses for people needing medical treatment.

"Or, it will act as a dis-incentive to bulk billing," she said.

Labor's parliamentary secretary for Health and Ageing, Shayne Neumann, said the ALP made the decision to reduce the indexation to Medicare payments to cut the budget deficit.

He said there was not a problem with a decrease in the number of doctors being prepared to bulk bill their patients.

"Bulk billing was 67 per cent during the Howard Government, when Mr Abbott was the health minister," he said.

"It is around 82 per cent under this Labor government," he said.

Mr Neumann, the Member for Blair, said Labor did not anticipate bulk billing rates would drop as the Greens believed.

Senator Waters said the Greens would fund the policy from a re-engineered mining tax, which Treasury forecasts show could raise $21.8 billion over the four-year forward estimates.

She agreed that the mining tax revenue ebbed and flowed as a profits-based tax, but disagreed this made the mining tax unreliable as a regular, predictable stream of revenue.

"I accept that it is a profits-based tax, but I also accept that there are a lot of taxes that are dependent on projections, this one included," she said.

"And governments work with that uncertainty and they rely on the projections that Treasury makes.

"So we are relying on Treasury estimates."

The Greens also propose to levy major banks to the tune of 0.2 per cent for deposits of more than $100 billion, raising $8.4 billion over four years.

"So it would only affect the big four banks," she said.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/greens-push-for-medicare-budget-boost...

Verge wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 9:43am:



Disagree.
Greens have the opportunity of gaining the balance in both houses and so greening up whichever old party gain minority government control.
Since Abbott has ruled out working from minority, more likely Labor.

BlOoDy RiPpEr wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 10:00am:



Scared because you cant debate logically over logical Greens policies?

____ wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 9:48am:



RUBBISH and you know it........and btw the greens have also said they wont work with the Libs....as a minority they say far too much sometimes this is why they are on the bottom of both parties preferences..... if you really believe that people will vote you into the senate because it gives you some sort of false power.... I think you will find you are wrong wrong wrong.....all it does is disable the voted in govt... and I think most are over that dont you???...

btw abbott said he will have another election if its a hung election...and good for him...

Verge wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 10:21am:



Due to the potential of currently announced Liberal policies so to favour marginal seat results away from the coalition.
Polling is always reflective of past opinions and the opinions of swing voters at the moment are very fluid.
There is a reasonable chance the election could swing anyway, including a hung parliament where Greens hold the balance in both houses.

____ wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 10:39am:


yes it is a possibility. But so is a coup.  They have about the same probability at the moment.

PZ547 wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 1:47pm:


The Greens are merely being told to go and get their OWN votes instead of leeching of other parties.  How cruel!!