The Australian Medical Association president, Michael Gannon, has said he would be “gobsmacked” if the government retained an ongoing GP rebate freeze at the next election after getting the “scare of its life” at the 2 July election.
Gannon said he thought the 2014 budget had resulted in a loss of trust in the Coalition on health and Malcolm Turnbull was sincere in acknowledging it needs to revamp its policies as a result.
He made the comments on Thursday after his first meeting with the health minister, Sussan Ley, since she was reappointed on Monday.
Gannon said the meeting with Ley was productive but it was too early to expect policy change as cabinet had not yet met. He said the AMA would push for a serious timeline to ditch the GP rebate freeze, and the sooner the better.
“The AMA took a set of policies to the election campaign, supporting elements of Labor policy leading into the election,” he said. “We saw a government get the scare of its life when it comes to health.
“But we look forward to a productive relationship with the government during this term.
“I would be gobsmacked if the government took an ongoing freeze to the next election.”
He nominated the GP rebate freeze as the policy that hurt the Coalition the most. The freeze was introduced by Labor in 2013 for nine months and the Coalition then extended it in the 2014 and 2016 budgets out until 2020.
The AMA has warned the two-year extension of the Medicare rebate freeze from 2018 to 2020 would take $925m out of patients’ pockets and undermine the bulk-billing system by forcing doctors to charge.
Before the election, Labor promised to end the rebate freeze at a cost of $2.4bn over four years.
During the campaign Ley said she wanted to lift the GP rebate freeze as soon as possible but finance and treasury wouldn’t let her do so yet.
Gannon said the GP rebate freeze threatened the viability of some general practices and harmed their ability to continue bulk-billing needy patients.
He welcomed Labor’s plan to end the GP rebate freeze by 2017 and said he wanted undertakings from the government for a “firm timeline” to ditch it.
Gannon said that the 2014 budget had resulted in “a loss of trust between the Australian people and the Coalition on health policy”.
He said Ley was willing to listen to those concerns and the discussion had focused on the fact health was not the problem with the budget and should not be targeted in further attempts at budget repair.
After the election the prime minister acknowledged the government needed to address voter concern about the Coalition’s commitment to Medicare and appeared to criticise decisions on health in the 2014 budget by saying the government had left “fertile ground” for a Labor scare campaign on health.
Asked about those comments, Gannon said they indicated “the prime minister was very sincere, in knowing that he wants to see changes”.
“The prime minister acknowledged that his party and their policies had left that fertile ground,” he said. “What I want to see is the kind of policies that the Turnbull government can turn up in three years time seeking re-election and say ‘look, we’ve listened, this is what we’ve done for general practice, this is what we’ve done for public hospitals’.”
