Doctors will unleash a pre-election attack on the Coalition over delayed reforms to GP care, pressuring the federal government as it seeks to limit the pandemic’s impact on the budget.
After COVID-19 measures added $41 billion to health and aged care spending over the past two years, the Morrison government has stalled on its promised 10-year Primary Health Plan, which it said in 2019 would “strengthen and modernise” GP care.
AMA president Omar Khorshid says GPs feel betrayed by the federal government. Credit:Peter de Kruijff
Australian Medical Association President Omar Khorshid said doctors were “bitterly disappointed” by the Coalition’s failure to deliver its plan to revolutionise general practice as promised in the 2019-20 federal budget.
“This is a promise that’s been broken by the government,” Dr Khorshid said.
He said the government seemed to have decided it had already spent enough on health during the pandemic, “but health is actually in desperate need of investment”.
Dr Khorshid said the AMA would push both Labor and the Coalition to commit to funding GP reforms.
“Both parties have frozen Medicare rebates at different times. And neither party winning government has been able to effectively reform Medicare,” he said.
“There’s no frontrunner at the moment but, having made these commitments and then pulling the rug out from underneath general practice, the government will be behind the eight-ball when it comes to what GPs will be saying to their patients about who to vote for in the election.”
Central to the government’s proposed reforms is a new system that would allow patients to enrol with a single GP practice and access extra services – such as wound dressings, physiotherapy and mental health support – called MyGP.
The 2019-20 federal budget included $448.5 million for GPs to deliver chronic disease care to enrolled patients aged 70 and above over three years from 2020-21, but this has not happened.
The government is yet to release the final version of its 10-year Primary Health Plan and the AMA fears it will not be funded in the March 29 budget.
Federal health spending is on track to hit $98.7 billion this financial year, almost $20 billion more than before COVID-19 hit. Health has expanded to 16.7 per cent of the federal budget, up from 16.1 per cent in 2018-19 when $78.8 billion was spent on health.
A draft 10-year Primary Health Plan released in October said over time GP practices would be given extra funding for “multidisciplinary, team-based care” tailored to the demographic of enrolled patients, with specific support for young families, elderly patients, people with mental illness, disability or complex chronic diseases.
The Primary Health Reform Steering Group appointed by the government in 2019 recommends allied health workers such as mental health nurses, social workers, dieticians and physiotherapists work in GP clinics.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday his government had already delivered “telehealth, one of the biggest reforms to primary care delivered in this country, which was borne out of the pandemic and we have taken forward as a major reform initiative”.
“Healthcare remains central to the government’s agenda,” Mr Morrison told reporters in Dobell, an ultra-marginal electorate on the NSW Central Coast held by Labor MP Emma McBride, a former hospital pharmacist, on a margin of 1.5 per cent.
“We’ll have a bit more to say about these issues as we get into the budget in a few more weeks’ time.”
Mr Morrison is under pressure from the states to permanently boost hospital funding after last week extending a temporary COVID-19 deal to pay half of hospital costs until September 30 and has committed $18 billion for aged care over five years to 2025-26.
A spokesman for Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government was finalising its 10-year Primary Care Plan and had already made “significant investment in primary care through telehealth, vaccinations and COVID-19 management”.
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