BOWMAN MP Andrew Laming has championed the government’s proposed $20 cut to Medicare rebates for short patient consultations less than 10 minutes.
From Monday, rebates for GP visits will drop, on average, by $5.
Rebates for consultations lasting up to six minutes will drop from $21 to $16 and rebates for those lasting more than 10 minutes will drop $5 from $37.05 to $32.05.
However, rebates for visits between six and 10 minutes will drop $20.10, from $37.05 to $16.95.
The move raised the ire of the Labor Party, The Greens and some cross benchers who proposed to quash the $20 cut with a disallowance motion, when Parliament resumes next month.
Mr Laming said the new policy would encourage doctors to spend more time with patients and end “six-minute” medicine.
The $20 cut was only one of the changes Mr Laming said was included in the government’s new Medicare rebate policy.
The others included a $5 cut to rebates for non-concessional patients on July 1 and a freeze on indexation of rebates until July 1, 2018.
Rebates for doctors of bulk-billed patients who do not have concession cards will be cut by $5 but doctors could choose to recoup the fee from the patient through an optional co-payment.
Pathology tests, or a diagnostic imaging services would not be affected and current rebates and bulk-billing would remain.
Mr Laming said a 10 per cent increase in Medicare claims from $8.6 billion in 2003-04 to about $20 billion this year, forced the government to step in before claims increased more than the health budget.
