HI Dr Frank I will amend the web site, I agree this is a direct result of government policy not Medicare regulations.
Regards James Bishop Longevity Medical Ph 03 98482009 Fax 03 98407064 Mb 0413582615 -----Original Message----- From: Oliver Frank [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 3 March 2007 6:03 PM To: James Bishop; Nat Div list; OzDocIT list; Andrew Bracey Subject: Gap billing prohibition is the government's decision 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 _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
