JONES:
PM, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan. Well filled.
JONES:
Doing my best PM, doing a bit of guessing. So you';re calling this MedicarePlus.
PRIME MINISTER:
The main reason is that for the very first time, Medicare under this plan will have a comprehensive safety net to give Australian families in particular peace of mind that if they run into a period where they have an enormous amount of additional expense with blood tests and so forth and all of these additional things that are now not fully covered by the Medicare arrangements, there will be a safety net, and that safety net will cover them. This is going to apply to the whole community. For people with concession cards, 80% over and above $500 of out of pocket expenses.
JONES:
So we';ll pay… they';ll pay the first $500.
PRIME MINISTER:
The first $500… JONES:
And after that, they';ll get 80% back.
PRIME MINISTER:
80% automatically back from the Government.
JONES:
Right. Okay now I';ve outlined the parameters there. And that';s Family Tax Benefit A.
PRIME MINISTER:
That';s any concession cardholder, whether they';ve got a family or they';re single. And then Family Tax Benefit A, which goes up to just under $100,000 for a family with three children, that family as a unit can aggregate its expenses and once they hit the $500, they get 80% back.
JONES:
Right.
PRIME MINISTER:
Now for the rest of us it will be a threshold of $1,000 and then you get 80% back. Now it';s estimated that something in the order of a quarter of a million families or individuals, and that would be a lot more than a quarter of a million people in total, will in any one year get the benefit of this.
JONES:
The doctors'; bills.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well not only doctors'; bills, but also if you go and get an x-ray or if you go and get a blood test or you go and get a pap smear – any of those things.
JONES:
Yes, I should say that the list does include blood tests, x-rays, scans.
PRIME MINISTER:
All of those.
JONES:
Radiotherapy, psychiatry, gynaecology and so on.
PRIME MINISTER:
[inaudible] performed out of hospital.
JONES:
Right. So Kerry Packer will get 80% back of any medical bill over $1,000.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well he can have free access to a public hospital now. The principle is the same.
JONES:
Right. Can I just give you a case study here of one of my staff because… and that is very simple. But if you take someone who is married, as one staff member is here, with four young children and say he';s on about 85, which he is, but he';s also got a company car which according to the tax office is a fringe benefit of $20,000 which puts him at $105,000. So even immediately, although he';s got four kids and the wife stays at home looking after the kids, he comes into the second category, so he';ll only get a rebate after he';s spent $1,000 on doctors expenses. Now that would require up to about 29 visits with his children to qualify, which is about a visit every 1.8 weeks. So he could still be left paying the $1,000 and not get a benefit at all.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well he can still be left paying the $1,000. But bear in mind Alan that if your child gets ill, it';s not just a visit to the doctor. It';s all those extra things that you get [inaudible], scans and so forth that you often now undertake because the techniques and the equipment is available. So you shouldn';t just measure it according to visits to the doctor. But the principle behind this is to protect people against unreasonably large expenses. If you have a system where there is absolutely no patient contribution, well as you have said quite rightly in the past, that system can end up getting abused.
JONES:
So just to sum up that – so Family Tax Benefit A people, that';s people who hold concession cards…
PRIME MINISTER:
People who hold concession cards…
JONES:
… will pay the first $500 of medical or anything else that';s involved…
PRIME MINISTER:
No hang on – the first $500 out of pocket in relation to any out of hospital treatment.
JONES:
That';s right.
PRIME MINISTER:
And that';s a doctor or an x-ray or something like that.
JONES:
Right. Blood tests, CT scans, all that sort of stuff. Right. After the $500 out of pocket, he gets 80% back.
PRIME MINISTER:
That';s right.
JONES:
If he doesn';t qualify, if he';s not a card carrying member, not Family Tax Benefit A, he meets the first $1,000 out of pocket and after that he gets 80%.
PRIME MINISTER:
And I can say to your listeners that it has been calculated that four out of five families with children will fall into the first category.
JONES:
That';s correct.
PRIME MINISTER:
And there';s something like 12 million Australians it';s been calculated…
JONES:
Yes I think it sounds virtuous in its simplicity.
PRIME MINISTER:
It is very simple.
JONES:
Can I just come to the bulk billing issue. I know there is a problem about bulk billing services and you';re concerned to get bulk billing to low income workers and so on. Can you seriously expect bulk billing to survive when the rebate to the doctor is a bit over $25.
PRIME MINISTER: Yes you can. The main driver of bulk billing rates Alan is the availability of doctors. There are parts of Sydney, and it doesn';t matter whether they';re Labor electorates or Liberal electorates, where the rates of bulk billing are over 80%. There are parts of rural Australia and outer metropolitan Australia where the bulk billing rates are below 50% and it';s got to do with the availability of doctors. And one of the things that we addressed in A Fairer Medicare and one of the things that we';ll be addressing even more in this package is to increase the availability of doctors and to increase the availability of practice nurses.
JONES:
How do address the critical shortage of doctors?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there are a whole variety of ways. I mean, we';re going to make more medical places available, we';re going to address issues relating to overseas doctors and there are a variety of other things that the Minister and I will announce later this morning.
JONES:
Right and then to attract GPs to those areas that you';re not talking about, there will be incentives, will there, to attract GPs?
PRIME MINISTER:
There will be a variety of policies which are designed to attract doctors to areas where there';s a demonstrated workforce shortage.
JONES:
But if you and I have to get a plumber coming in today, he';d charge me most probably $90. He may charge that before he does anything to arrive. Is it legitimate to say that on a matter of health, a matter of life and death, all we';re offering a doctor for that bulkbilling consultation is $25.70?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the plumber is not subsidised by the Government, is he? And if you need a plumber, you';ve got to pay for the whole thing. Where you';re talking here about to what extend should the taxpayer subsidise the individual in relation to a visit to the doctor. Now we have a Medicare system which guarantees that everybody is entitled to the rebate of 85% of the scheduled fee for a visit to a doctor. And the question of whether doctors charge more than that or not is something that from the time Medicare was started 20 years ago has always been a matter of negotiation between the patient and the doctor. Now, we increased the Medicare rebate by a certain percentage each year, the doctors argue it should be a lot more. There is a lot of evidence, and even the Labor dominated Senate committee a few weeks ago acknowledged this, that at least the equal driver of the level of bulkbilling is the availability of doctors. And in fact, that committee cast real doubt on whether a significant across the board increase in the Medicare rebate would produce a significant alteration in the level of bulkbilling.
JONES: Is the philosophy sound that we should expect other people to pick up the tab for our healthcare if we are not in genuine need? PRIME MINISTER:
I think the philosophy is sound that you provide a universal system that guarantees everybody free treatment in a public hospital, you provide the universal Medicare rebate, you allow as both Labor and Liberal Governments have allowed doctors and patients to determine between them whether bulkbilling occurs or not. But you';ve got to provide some kind of safety net and I think the thing that';s been missing from Medicare up until now has been that people have always had at the back of their mind, look I can cover the bill for normal illnesses but if my children get really very ill and I have a whole run of visits to the doctors I can be up for thousands of dollars a year and I don';t have any protection against it… Now the great advantage of this very simple safety net is that that piece of mind is delivered to the entire Australian community and I think the great virtue of this is that in one simple way, one simple stroke, we have provided the piece of mind against that kind of catastrophic additional expense that no family, normal family can really provide for but every family fears might occur.
JONES:
Just take that phrase, if I could, to change tack, piece of mind, one of these emails yesterday that was lobbed in the lap of the Turkish authorities says - and allegedly from al-Qaeda and bin Laden – “there';s more to come, by God the Jews of the world will regret that their men thought of invading the lands of the Muslims, we tell the criminal Bush and his Arab and non-Arab followers, especially Britain, Italy, Australia and Japan, the cars of death will not stop at Baghdad, Riyadh, Istanbul, Jerba, Nasiriyah or Jakarta”. Now PM, if these people in their threats can let off bombs in Istanbul';s largest synagogue, are we being alarmist in suggesting that this could happen in an Australian supermarket?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, it is less likely to happen in Australia than in most other countries. But it could happen. I have never disguised my concern that at some stage in the future there could be a terrorist attack in Australia. It is less likely than in many other countries and bear in mind that Australia';s been a terrorist target according to our information from even before the 11th of September 2001 and that';s from interrogation of al-Qaeda people. But I have never represented to the Australian people that it can';t happen here, it can. I think it';s less likely, we are less vulnerable than most. But we are, along with all other western countries, we are vulnerable. And the significant point to make is that over the last nine months the terrorists have killed more Muslims than they have adherents to any other faith, this is the extraordinarily indiscriminate cruel thing about what they are doing, they claim to do it in the name of Islam, obscenely claim to do it in the name of Islam, yet they are claiming more of their Islamic brothers and sisters lives than they are the lives of Christians and Jews.
JONES:
Thanks, PM, we';ll leave it there. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay. Bye.
[ends]