Mmmm, And like most/many others I already pay a user-pays levy for my visits to the GP (twice a year) via the Medicare Levy - which effectively increases every year. And I also pay a private user-pays levy via my private health insurance ... which I wouldn't have entered into if it didn't make sense from a tax/levy perspective. And now I'm being asked to handle ANOTHER levy of $7 for each of my six monthly trips to the doctor ... 30% of which is being absorbed as an administrative fee by my doctor (who doesn't bulk bill and charges about twice the scheduled fee).
Well, I'm gonna do what the government wants. I'm gonna restrict my visits to the GP to once every 9 months, and hope that a few others also register a protest. The GP can do with less of my business, I can do with less oversight by him, the government makes even more of a profit out of me, the private health insurance fund just keeps getting its 'money for nothing' ... and everybody's happy. Hey, it comes off the GP's trade, but he can make a mint over-servicing all those sick and unhealthy pensioners, unemployed and the like ... Oh, wait a moment. Well, somebody's gotta pay ... and for me, it's gonna be the medical profession. Just my 2 cents worth ... --- On 14 May 2014, at 1:03 pm, Hamish Moffatt <ham...@cloud.net.au> wrote: > On 14/05/14 11:52, Jim Birch wrote: >> >> Hamish Moffatt wrote: >> >> whether a user-pays approach to everything is really in our best >> interests in the long term >> >> >> I'm not in favour of user-pays as some kind of general moral/economic >> principle, but I am strongly in favour of the Pigovian approach to >> things that cause problems, eg, congestion or CO2. Pricing does >> modify behaviour, especially in the long-term. >> >> > Doesn't everything become a problem along these lines as society grows? > Now we're going to have a $7 co-payment to visit the GP, which is just > as much as disincentive as it is genuinely a co-payment... User-pays to > call a government hotline next? > > > Hamish > _______________________________________________ > Link mailing list > Link@mailman.anu.edu.au > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
