{"id":3545,"date":"2015-02-01T16:07:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T16:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3545"},"modified":"2015-02-01T16:07:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T16:07:49","slug":"health-minister-reverses-plan-to-cut-medicare-rebate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3545","title":{"rendered":"Health Minister reverses plan to cut Medicare rebate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal government was hell bent on implementing the unpopular plan of cutting the Medicare rebate scheduled to take effect on Monday, January 19, 2015. It was really an ingenious plan of the Abbott-Hockey tandem to collect money through the backdoor after their failed attempt to carry out the $7 co-payment system.<\/p>\n

But after meeting strong opposition from angry doctors and the general public, Health Minister Sussan Ley announced that the cuts \u2014 quietly conceived by her predecessor Peter Dutton \u2014 are now “off the table”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Had the Abbott administration succeeded, several thousands of general practitioners would have stopped the current practice of bulk billing and in effect “killed” the universal health system in Australia.<\/p>\n

It seems however that the battle is still on. Ms Ley said she would still introduce price measures into Medicare including the revised $7 GP co-payment which is to start on July 1 this year, but pledged to “pause, listen and consult.”<\/p>\n

“This is very much my stamp, I believe, on the portfolio \u2014 that of consulting, engaging and listening,” the beleaguered health minister \u00a0stated to media.<\/p>\n

“I’ve heard, I’ve listened and I’m deciding to take this action now,” she added. Ms Ley said she planned to work together with the Senate and the public sector to make health more sustainable. She also said she would welcome ideas from crossbenchers. The reversal of plan came just hours after Prime Minister Tony Abbott strongly defended the measure<\/a> as an “economic reform.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal government was hell bent on implementing the unpopular plan of cutting the Medicare rebate scheduled to take effect on Monday, January 19, 2015. It was really an ingenious plan of the Abbott-Hockey tandem to collect money through the backdoor after their failed attempt to carry out the $7 co-payment system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,42,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}