The best interests of patients?

It is important to maintain the support of the medical profession because, let's face it, they have the best interests of their patients at heart.
 
The Prime Minister's statement on 9 February may have been motivated by the desire to begin a strategic retreat from a politically unpopular policy, yet it reinforces a dangerous sentiment: that it is wise for politicians to give powerful vested interests control over whether or not there is reform in their industry.
 
The Australian Medical Association (AMA), of which 40% of Australian doctors are members, has opposed a number of healthcare reforms; including the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in the 1940s and Medibank in the 1970s. These policies drastically reformed the supply of healthcare in Australia; change which doctors naturally feared due to the uncertainty they created within the profession, and also professional conservatism.
 
But when Medibank was reintroduced as Medicare in 1984 by the Hawke Government, this was supported by the AMA. The profession had changed its tune because the brief operation of Medibank under Whitlam in1975 had demonstrated that the scheme, and bulk billing in particular, were anything but a threat to GP incomes.
 
Hence the AMA's current opposition to the GP copayment belongs to its long tradition of political activity motivated by the desire to protect the incomes of its membership.
 
Conflicts of interest are also key. The AMA opposes reforming the fee for service system of remuneration. Fee for service has its merits as a means of increasing the supply of medical care but rewards over-servicing, over-referral, and over-prescribing. Abuses occur, and though generally honourable, not all doctors are blind to financial self-interest. For example, according to the Medical Journal of Australia, unnecessary surgeries, such as coronary stents, and in-house referrals (within the same practice) are driving up the cost of Medicare by millions.
 
In light of the Commission of Audit and the government's focus on unnecessary GP visits, and by extension treatments in general, the AMA's stance must be examined.
 
The Medicare Levy raises $13.37 billion, a quarter of which funds DisabilityCare Australia, and just the medical services part of the scheme costs $18.55 billion. Health is the second largest source of federal government expenditure growth and, as the Inter-Generational Reports have repeatedly shown, is growing at an unsustainable rate.  To make the scheme affordable without cutting standards requires the reform the AMA is against. Giving doctors an effective veto over health policy is at best, unwise.

Lachlan Philips is an intern at the Centre for Independent Studies.