In several suburban Melbourne electorates,more than 20 per cent of clinics said they stopped bulk-billing all patients during last year.
Services Australia is grappling with 1.1 million unprocessed health and welfare claims. Its new boss David Hazlehurst wants to halve that by the middle of this year.
A company with dozens of diagnostic imaging centres in Queensland has been taken to court by the Medicare watchdog over alleged “inappropriate practice”.
New data published by the federal government shows there has been a 2.1 percentage point increase in the national GP bulk-billing rate since November.
Universal health care was a proud Labor achievement. At 40,Medicare is in better shape than its US and UK peers,but there are cracks in the ageing edifice.
GPs want to relieve the burden on those with chronic and complex illnesses,and to provide yearly checks for children.
The overall bulk-billing rate for the 7.8 million diagnostic imaging services carried out in Australia in the September quarter was 76.4 per cent – the lowest since the three months to December 2013.
The government will consider eight potential ways of expanding Medicare to help improve the smiles of Australians for between $2 billion and $11 billion a year.
A joint investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes revealed patients around the country have been left deformed and feeling misled about the qualifications of podiatric surgeons.
Poor perceptions about the public health system and surgery waitlists are helping drive the trend.
The system for victim compensation is broken for everyone,but it’s particularly harsh on survivors of child sexual abuse.