Doctors examine patients at a medical centre of the Greek delegation of the Doctors of the World in Athens May 31, 2012. Greece's rundown state hospitals are cutting off vital drugs, limiting non-urgent operations and rationing even basic medical material
IN PHOTO: Doctors examine patients at a medical centre of the Greek delegation of the Doctors of the World in Athens May 31, 2012. Greece's rundown state hospitals are cutting off vital drugs, limiting non-urgent operations and rationing even basic medical materials for exhausted doctors as a combination of economic crisis and political stalemate strangle health funding. With Greece now in its fifth year of deep recession, trapped under Europe's biggest public debt burden and dependent on international help to keep paying its bills, the effects are starting to bite deeply into vital services. Picture taken May 31, 2012. Reuters/Stringer

The federal government has proposed changes to Medicare, high quality national health programmes offered by the Australian government, according to which the average cost of a standard "Level B" consultation spanning 15 minutes with a general practitioner would cost more. The Doctors' Reform Society, a medico-political think tank, said that the fees would exceed more than $100.

According to The Age, the Doctors' Reform Society is made up of a lobby group that supports publicly funded universal health care. The society said that the government planned to reduce the rebate of Medicare for the doctors by 45 and then freeze it until 2018. It mentioned that this move by the government was a promotion for "return to a failed privatised system of the past" according to which the doctors were free to charge what the market could bear.

The Australian Medical Association, a membership organisation that represents doctors and medical students of Australia, estimated that 82 percent of the visits to the GP were bulk-billed and the patients who paid privately, made an average payment of $30. Another estimate by the association showed that a quarter of the patients who were bulk-bille did not possess a concessions card.

Con Costa, a GP and the national president of the society, said that the current freeze on the Medicare rebates for a span of another four years would hit the budget of the GP clinics very hard. He said that it would also drive away many doctors from bulk-billing, resulting in them increasing their fees for patients who do not possess concession cards.

One GP commented that the change would be devastating for the working poor. He said that the result of the change would be that the working poor would not seek medical help anymore.

The former Labor government had frozen the rebate for a standard consultation of 20 minutes at $37.05. The recommendation for the GPs by the Australian Medical Association was that they should charge a sum of $75 for the consultation. This would mean that those patients who do not have a concession card would have to pocket out $37.95.

Costa said that some doctors were already charging $80, and by 2016, a few of them would hike their fees to $100. He explained that they were predicting a rapid rise in the fees of doctors. He said that to date, the only reason there was a lid on the fees as well as charges in general practice was because of Medicare and the high rates of bulk-billing. According to the new proposal of the government, if the fees of a GP was $100 upfront, then the patient would receive a Medicare rebate of $32.05, meaning that the patient would have to pocket out $67.95.