Dear James,
Thanks for your efforts to make the Medicare system more efficient.
I note on the Website
http://www.medicarebefair.com/
the statement:
"Medicare prohibits doctors’ gap billing any patient who is privately
billed by their GP (doctor)"
I feel that this is misleading. Medicare does not make any decisions
about policy. Its role is to see that Medicare claims are handled as
efficiently as possible, according to the rules that are dictated to it
by the Minister and the federal Department of Health and Ageing.
I think that it is worth making it clear to the public and to the
profession that the ban on gap billing is government policy, initiated
years ago by federal Labour governments and continued by the current
government. The purpose of the ban of gap billing is a political one of
discouraging private billing and encouraging bulk billing.
I think that we need to tell the public and our colleagues that there is
no point in harassing Medicare officials about the waste caused by the
ban on gap billing. They are only too well aware of it and they agree
with us. The only way to get the ban lifted is by getting the Health
Minister to persuade his colleagues in Cabinet that it should be lifted.
Until that happens, I believe that the only response that we can make in
our practices is that whenever a patient does not pay in full for a
service, we increase our fee to cover the costs to our practice of the
current scheme that results in 'pay doctor cheques', tell the patients
the reasons for this and encourage them to contact their local federal
parliamentarians if they want to get it changed.
--
Oliver Frank, general practitioner
255 North East Road, Hampstead Gardens, South Australia 5086
Phone 08 8261 1355 Fax 08 8266 5149 Mobile 0407 181 683
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