41
One million Australians missing specialist doctor appointments due to cost, report finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
41 points (100.0% liked)
Australia
4271 readers
225 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Seeing a professor for a complex health issue: $600
Medicare rebate: $80
Private health: $0
Medicare needs to do a LOT better for that to work
Yes, obviously medicare would need to increase the rebate and private insurance fees would necessarily increase(as they would now be actually paying for care rather than acting a a gatekeeping mechanism)
Rebate for a short consult with a specialist is $81.55, a long consult is $236.65.
The title professor indicates that they hold a teaching position and says nothing about their clinical skill. Plenty of specialists take the piss and leverage the title to charge ridiculous fees.
In my experience as a GP a reasonable standard fee for a specialist is around $300 with $80 back from Medicare. So yes the Medicare rebate would need to increase substantially but I doubt more than we will save when AUKUS falls through. It is within the capacity of a government with the right priorities. Also increasing the availability of public specialists would be a good companion policy.
Would be great if they put it down as a long consult, I was there for quite a while with three "fellows" each checking me too. I was referred to a leading university clinic from a specialist ($$$ again) but I am sure there are plenty of profs or similar gouging because of an academic title
To be clear most professors are senior in their field and usually indicates research as well as teaching, I was in a cantankerous mood this morning. But regardless Medicare needs to take access to specialist treatment seriously.
All we need to do is tax the miners, and put the money toward healthcare, and whatever else we want with the money left over.
Nationalise the mines and be done with it