Management consultants are making millions off Scott Morrison’s Medicare review – but the benefits to ordinary Australians struggling with out-of-control health care costs are yet to materialise.
Mr Morrison must explain why he thinks showering McKinsey with $20 million to help him find new Medicare savings is a good use of taxpayers’ money.
He must also come clean about what he’s done with the $600 million of savings he’s already made from his Medicare Benefits Schedule Review.
Until he does, Australians will rightly suspect that this is just another cut to health from the Government that gave us the GP tax, the Medicare freeze, and $715 million in cuts from public hospitals from 2017-20 alone.
This is classic Morrison. Ensuring that his rich mates get even richer while cutting public health funding at every opportunity.
Labor is all for making sure Medicare is modern and sustainable. We support the stated goals of the MBS Review – to make sure that every MBS item is evidence-based and represents value for money.
But every single dollar saved through the review should be reinvested back into Medicare.
This review was meant to conclude this year but will now stretch into 2019 – and possibly beyond the next election.
Before Australians are asked to vote Mr Morrison must clarify whether he intends to implement all the recommendations of the review.
If he intends to cherry-pick the recommendations, he must come clean on what sort of services and patients he intends to target.
The Liberals have always hated Medicare and simply cannot be trusted with it. Labor is the only party committed to making Medicare stronger.
MONDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 2018