p align=”justify”>This week Bill Shorten and I received a petition from Dr Kate Kelso and Deputy Editor of the Australian Doctor Magazine Paul Smith. They presented us with a petition calling for the Abbott Government to abandon their GP tax, signed by 2500 doctors.
Below are just a few of the stories from GP’s at the front line warning the Federal Government that their GP Tax is bad for the health of ordinary Australians.
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This week Bill Shorten and I received a petition from Dr Kate Kelso and Deputy Editor of the Australian Doctor Magazine Paul Smith. They presented us with a petition calling for the Abbott Government to abandon their GP tax, signed by 2500 doctors.
Below are just a few of the stories from GP’s at the front line warning the Federal Government that their GP Tax is bad for the health of ordinary Australians.
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FEARFUL FOR MY AGED CARE PATIENTS
Bellbrae, VIC
I am a GP registrar in rural Victoria. I regularly visit up to 20 nursing home patients in a rural aged care facility. Through regular visits, I am able to manage the chronic health issues of these vulnerable people, and help keep them in their home and out of the hospital, saving Australian taxpayers thousands and thousands of dollars.
I am also able to meet the palliative care needs of my dying patients so they can die in comfort, with peace and dignity in their home without costly transfers to hospital.
A $7 co-payment will make regular visits for some patients unaffordable. I genuinely fear that they will refuse visits, fail to have proper management of their heart failure / diabetes / chronic lung disease / urinary tract infections etc. and will end up in hospital at huge expense and inconvenience. I am furious at the short-sighted nature of these proposed reforms.
It is false economy at its most heartless.
WHERE WILL THIS PATIENT GO?
Narellan, NSW
One evening I had a patient with advanced lower respiratory tract infection. After the consultation I wrote a script for antibiotics to be dispensed the same day as I suspected pneumonia and it was too late for an X-ray.
The patient questioned if she could wait for her Centrelink payment, which she would receive in two days. Knowing how sick she was and the danger for waiting two days, I handed her $10 to buy the medication.
I am asking politicians, where this patient will go with the co-payment?
THE WOMAN FROM THE REFUGE AND HER CHILDREN
Kingston, TAS
There are many stories that could be told, but I’ll tell this one. My patient was a mum in her 30s with two little kids. She was poorly educated, nervous, respectful. The three of them were living in a women’s refuge for the usual reasons. They came in every few weeks: asthma, kids’ colds, anxiety.
One day, as they were leaving, the mum said to the children: “We’re going to the chemist now.” And the kids beamed and said with obvious delight, “The chemist! Will we be able to get some water and one of those mints Mum?” The mum smiled and said yes, and gave me this look that I have always remembered.
See, at the chemist there is a free water dispenser and a little bowl of free mints. The look the mum gave me showed the delight that every mother feels in seeing her children happy. But she was also sad that these freebies meant so much to her kids, and embarrassed because now I knew too.
Seven dollars mightn’t seem that much to people whose kids get to go out for milkshakes but if this mum had to pay $7, her kids wouldn’t miss out on a trip to a cafe. They would simply miss out on coming to the doctor, on their vaccinations, on their antibiotics, on their asthma puffers. They’d miss out on contact with me and the practice nurse and the reception staff — with a whole set of friendly adults who spoke to their mum respectfully and helped show them that grownups can be kind.
$7 COULD HAVE COST A LIFE
Peregian Springs , QLD
A 15-year-old girl with abdominal pain. She had been given analgesics by the pharmacist. She presented as a walk-in to a bulk-billing clinic. With a full history and examination, it was clear she could have had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy.
Confirmed by ultrasound, admitted as a public patient to hospital.
A $7 co-payment might have stopped her coming to the GP until too late. Might have cost her her life.
EVENTUALLY GPs WILL GIVE UP
Bannockburn, VIC
At my general practice, we generally state that we are not a bulkbilling clinic, but in fact we bulk-bill more than 50% of consultations because we know it is difficult for people to pay us. I rarely see patients who do not need to see a GP and seem to be ‘just in for a chat’.
There are many patients that must be bulk-billed to allow them to attend, because they would not afford it otherwise. These patients have too many other things going on in their lives to attend the GP without good reason, and they all have multiple concurrent issues affecting their health.
The following is a typical example of a patent’s set of issues: poor heath literacy, poor diet and dentition, poor medication compliance (often due to cost issues) smokers, drinkers, those who’ve suffered family violence, mental health issues, other physical issues, and of course, stress.
These patients need a lot of time with a GP to make progress on these complex issues, and the GP and practice do not get adequately remunerated for spending longer consults with patients as it is. And of course, these patients won’t attend if they are not bulk billed.
So of course it will fall back on the GP, who is trying to care for the patients and not put finances first, to bulk bill the patient; and with this proposed change, the GP will be doing it all for $5 less every time. I know that there will be a large numbers of purely bulk-billing practices in the poorest suburbs that will just have to close if this change comes in.
When you spend time talking to people who are disadvantaged about their problems, you feel morally obliged to help them. However, you get burned out very easily doing this all the time — financial stress increases the chance of this.
So eventually, most GPs in the poorest communities will either give up or move to an area that is better-off.
THE CO-PAYMENT WILL ABSOLUTELY REMOVE ACCESS
Singleton, WA
The co-payment plan will affect both the practices I work in profoundly.
They are entirely bulk-billing practices for 12-25-year olds, mostly marginalised young people, in two outer-metropolitan suburbs that have some of the poorest social determinants of health in this wealthy state of ours.
This needy cohort, the future of our state and nation, rank access as one of the most important barriers to timely and quality healthcare.
The co-payment will absolutely remove access to these young people.
The practices will struggle to waive the co-payment as they operate on a shoestring as it is, and need longer, less-profitable consultations to sort out the multifactorial and complex presentations of marginalised young people. GP hours and administration support will be reduced in both practices that are currently running at capacity.