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Anthony Albanese Announces ‘Biggest Changes’ to Medicare Since It Started: Here’s How It Will Affect You
- Anthony Albanese has announced changes to Medicare
- The system is ‘struggling to keep up’, the PM said
- Nurses, pharmacists authorized to perform primary care
Medicare will undergo its most significant overhaul since its inception, and nurses and pharmacists will be able to perform primary care.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday that the Medicare system his government had inherited was “struggling to keep up.”
Bulk billing fees plummeted seven percent last year, and they continue to fall as general practice surgeries have no choice but to charge higher fees to supplement Medicare reimbursements.
In addition, patients are having difficulty getting timely appointments with their GPs, with wait times of more than a month for some doctors, due to a shrinking workforce and exploding demand.
Medicare will undergo its most significant overhaul since its inception. Above, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a pharmacy.
Albanese said too many people were going to emergency departments because they couldn’t access a GP.
“What we know we have to do is fix primary health care,” he told Channel Seven’s Sunrise programme.
“The biggest thing we’re looking at is how to take the pressure off the system, and we’re doing that: talking to the AMA, talking to the Royal Australian College of GPs, talking to experts because we want to make sure that this Medicare group is heard. worked.
Health Minister Mark Butler told The Australian the system was in “real trouble”. He said the system was stuck in the 1980s and 1990s and no longer made sense.
Rising gap fees mean experts and the government fear that without serious reform, access to primary health care would be out of reach for millions of Australians.
“We need physicians to work hand-in-hand with nurses, health professionals and pharmacists,” Butler said.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the previous government had neglected Medicare for 10 years.
“We need to do something to get him back on his feet,” he told Channel 7.
The government is considering implementing a ‘blended’ funding system, as the current system of subsidized individual consultations through general practitioners is no longer fit for purpose.
The new model would also fund nurses and allied health professionals who work in teams to deliver complex care.
Ms Plibersek said there were “a lot of highly-skilled people” working across the healthcare system and they should be tapped.
Details of the new financing model have not yet been finalized.