As we head towards the Budget in Early to Mid-May 2014 I thought It would be useful to keep a closer eye than usual on what was being said regarding what we might see coming out of the Budget.
According to the Australian Parliament web site Budget Night will be on Tuesday 13th May, 2014.
Here are some of the more interesting articles I have spotted this week.
-----
Everyone must bear budget burden: Hockey
Jacob Greber Economics correspondent
Treasurer Joe Hockey has ramped-up warnings that all parts of the community and business must contribute to the budget repair task or risk having the burden fall on a few.
With the government now considering the second and final report of its Audit Commission, Mr Hockey said without swift action Australians could expect to see standards of living fall.
“What we need to do is ensure the whole nation helps to do the heavy lifting to make the budget repair work, so we can not just maintain our quality of living but maybe improve our quality of living into the future,” he said on Monday.
-----
Finding savings in healthcare: moving from theory to reality
Jennifer Doggett Apr 06, 2014 8:47AM
With a tough federal Budget fast approaching, many in the health sector are offering up suggestions for where the Abbott Government might find savings. Some of these options were outlined in an article published in Croakey earlier this week. They include:
- cutting the price paid for generic drugs and encouraging substituting brand name drugs with generics,
- expanding the range of tele-health services that can be funded under Medicare,
- ensuring treatments listed on the Medical Benefits Schedule are effective and offer value for tax-payers, reducing use of those that are wasteful, and
- reducing the price paid for prosthesis, such as hip and knee replacements.
These options and more were discussed in detail at a roundtable, hosted by the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA), on options for finding savings in health and improving quality in health care. Dr Anne-marie Boxall, Director, Deeble Institute for Health Policy Research at the AHHA and co-author of Making Medicare, provided the following report from the Roundtable.
-----
Worse alternatives than higher GST
Date April 6, 2014
Peter Martin
Economics correspondent
So you’re frightened by the prospect of a higher GST? You shouldn’t be. The alternatives are worse.
One of them, outlined by Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson on Wednesday, is deceptively painful.
It’s doing nothing – just leaving the tax system on hold for 10 years and letting climbing revenues eat away at the projected deficits as inflation pushes more of our incomes into higher tax brackets.
It’s called “bracket creep”, although it can happen even if inflation doesn’t push your wage into a higher tax bracket. Every time your wage goes up, a greater proportion of it becomes taxed (above the tax-free threshold) rather than untaxed (below the threshold). It means that by doing nothing other than accepting ordinary annual wage rises, each of us is made to pay an ever increasing proportion of our income in tax.
-----
Funding for Mental Health
The Australian Government has provided $170 million for the continuation of 150 programs as part of its ongoing commitment to mental health.
Page last updated: 04 April 2014
4 April 2014
The Australian Government has provided $170 million for the continuation of 150 programs as part of its ongoing commitment to mental health.
The Minister for Health Peter Dutton said the funding would see the projects continue their work through 2014-15.
“It is essential to ensure the continuity for mental health services, suicide prevention and postvention programmes while the National Mental Health Commission undertakes its review of all existing services,” Mr Dutton said.
-----
Changes to Qld doctor contracts passed
4th Apr 2014
GOVERNMENT concessions made in the long-running dispute over senior doctors’ contracts have been passed in Queensland's parliament.
The changes passed on Thursday night mean senior medical officers will be offered life-long contracts that can't be varied to negatively affect doctors without an act of parliament.
It also limits the Queensland Health director-general's powers so directives can't affect a doctor's contract except when increased remuneration or improved benefits are offered.
However, the concessions may not be enough to resolve the dispute, with assistant health minister Dr Chris Davies on Thursday threatening to resign if the dispute was not resolved by the 30 April contract deadline.
-----
Qld govt takes doctors to court
2nd Apr 2014
THE feud between Queensland doctors and the state government over contracts is moving to a new battleground.
Lawyers for the state were due to appear before the Federal Court on Wednesday to try to stop doctors' groups and others spreading "misinformation" about proposed new contracts.
Some doctors and unions claim the contracts will strip employment protections and potentially compromise patient care.
-----
Greens move to stop IPN-Medibank deal
The Greens have stepped in to try to ban Medibank Private from paying a GP corporate to offer bulk-billed Medicare services to its customers.
It emerged this year that private health insurer Medibank Private had agreed to pay an "administration fee" to IPN for doctors at six of of the corporate's clinics to offer so-called priority access.
It translates into about 4500 Medibank policyholders having access to guaranteed appointments and bulk-billed services — including after-hours care.
But Greens Senator Richard Di Natale has introduced an amendment bill that would make it illegal for private health insurers to team up with primary care providers to provide preferential treatment for some patients.
-----
Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton urged to step in to resolve Queensland doctors' contract row
March 31, 2014
The Federal Opposition says Health Minister Peter Dutton should help resolve Queensland's doctors' contracts dispute.
Federal Opposition health spokeswoman Catherine King says there does not appear to be a back-up plan if Queensland doctors carry out their threat to resign en masse over the State Government's public hospital employment contracts.
The Federal Court will this week hear an application by Queensland Health to try to stop unions from allegedly misrepresenting proposed employment contracts for doctors.
Queensland Health is seeking an injunction to stop the circulation of documents that it claims misrepresents the State Government contracts.
-----
Australian Medical Association says push to stop union advice a grim prognosis for nation
Date March 31, 2014
Anna Patty
Workplace Editor
The Australian Medical Association fears the Queensland government's unprecedented attempt to stop unions from providing advice to members and its introduction of individual contracts for public hospital doctors could embolden other states to follow its example.
This week, Queensland Health will launch legal action in the Federal Court to stop the AMA, the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF) and Together, another union representing senior doctors, from passing on what is says is inaccurate information to its members.
It is unheard of for an employer to assert that a union, by talking to its members ... is engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct.
The unions have provided advice to senior salaried doctors about the government's introduction of individual contracts to override collective bargaining agreements.
-----
Cancer treatment funding under threat
- SEAN PARNELL
- The Australian
- April 03, 2014
HEALTH officials are in crisis talks after discovering certain cancer treatments have not been properly costed for a new national funding scheme being implemented in July.
The much-heralded introduction of activity-based funding, one of the key Labor health reforms, has come with a last-minute challenge for policymakers that appears to threaten the availability and affordability of radiotherapy.
The Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council — comprising the heads of commonwealth, state and territory health departments and key agencies — recently discussed the issue and agreed “further costing work should be undertaken as a matter of urgency”.
-----
Hockey is right, GST is worth talking about
Date April 3, 2014
Peter Martin
Economics correspondent
Treasurer Joe Hockey was aware of the broad content of Martin Parkinson's speech before he delivered it. His personal position on the goods and services tax remains unchanged.
Along with Tony Abbott, Hockey spent the entire election campaign never entirely ruling out an expanded GST. Why would he when he was about to commission a tax review that would examine everything?
Hockey has had the report of the National Commission of Audit for six weeks now. If it too has suggested an expanded GST it is something we are going have to take seriously.
At 10 per cent, Australia's GST is embarrassingly low by international standards. New Zealand started at 10 and went to 12.5 and then 15.
-----
Pharmacy jobs losses likely: Guild
Almost 9000 pharmacy jobs are set to be lost in the next 12 months as a result of increasing financial pressures, according to a survey carried out by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
The Guild’s Employment Expectations Report, released today, revealed that the pharmacy workforce is set to shrink by up to 14% in 2014, as the impacts of price disclosure and the loss of trading terms hit owners.
The survey found that pharmacy owners expected to lay-off more than 2200 pharmacists, 4400 pharmacy assistants and 2300 other staff members during the course of the year, due to growing financial pressures.
-----
Health plan launched in WA
10:38am April 1, 2014
The federal government has set aside $56.3 million for regional health and hospital services in Western Australia.
Federal cabinet is meeting in Perth on Tuesday ahead of Saturday's WA Senate election re-run.
Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton said new agreements would provide extra funds for kidney dialysis treatment, pathology and dental care.
-----
Health academic says $140m could be saved by following drug advice
Date April 1, 2014
Dan Harrison
Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent
The Abbott government could save more than $140 million over the next eight months simply by adhering to a recommendation from the expert body that advises it on medicines, a health expert says.
In 2012, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended that the price difference between the cholesterol-lowering drug simvastatin and a newer cholesterol-lowering medicine, atorvastatin, should, on average, be 12.5 per cent.
But the recommendation was not implemented. Simvastatin is one of scores of drugs that will drop in price by an average of 40 per cent from Tuesday under a policy limiting drug costs according to the market price.
-----
Medibank sale raises members’ rights
Ben Potter
In the four years since the Rudd government converted Medibank Private into a profit-making insurer, the Commonwealth has peeled off $1.366 billion in dividends and taxes. Profits after tax for Medibank Private have totalled just $964 million, and the he alth fund’s net assets have been whittled down from $1.72 billion in 2010 to $1.4 billion at June 30.
The Commonwealth’s haul amounts to a 16-fold return on the $85 million it put into Medibank, and revives an old debate over whether any prior rights of the 1.8 million members to the net assets have been trampled in the process.
The Abbott government has kicked off a sale process aimed at pulling in as much as $4 billion to help cut federal deficits. Lazard Australia – whose directors include former Labor prime minister Paul Keating, former finance minister Lindsay Tanner and former Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale – is advising the government.
The position of members – whose contributions have overwhelmingly funded Medibank Private since 1976 – was widely debated when the Howard government tried to sell it in 2006 .
-----
Backlash looms on health funding
- SEAN PARNELL
- The Australian
- April 01, 2014
RISING insurance premiums are funding more services in public hospitals, a sign that cost-shifting and budgetary pressures are altering the experience of universal health cover.
As insurance premiums today rise an average of 6.2 per cent, consumers and health industry stakeholders await the federal government’s response to the Commission of Audit to determine the future of hospital, primary and preventive care funding.
Health Minister Peter Dutton has used several recent speeches to suggest governments stop paying almost 100 per cent of public medical bills “when the patient is prepared to contribute to their own costs”. “To build a health system that is sustainable, the Coalition is interested in policies which offer longer-term system reform, making smarter use of funds to provide better care,’’ Mr Dutton said last week.
“The universal health system means that there will always be value in leveraging people into supporting their own health needs in the private sector.’’
-----
Proposals for health budget savings
Jennifer Doggett Mar 31, 2014 11:59PM
It’s fair to say that Peter Dutton has one of the more difficult jobs in Federal Parliament – particularly at the moment, with just over a month to go before the Federal Budget. Under pressure from a Treasurer desperate to deliver Budget savings, the Health Minister will need to offer up something in his rapidly growing portfolio. Luckily for him, there is no shortage of helpful advice from experts across the sector on how to achieve savings within the health sector.
While there appear to be a number of options for saving health dollars, many of the proposals may not offer the short-term budgetary impact that the Government seeks. Others are unlikely to deliver sustainable savings over the longer term while ensuring our health system remains fair and viable. Some may be politically or practically unrealistic or simply unethical. Finding one or more options which will deliver the savings required without losing the support of crucial stakeholders is the Government’s challenge.
-----
Comment:
The drumbeat suggesting a tough budget has been building. The final report of the Commission of Audit (COA) has been handed to Government and I am sure the leaks will start soon.
Economically we have both the Reserve Bank Governor and the Secretary of The Treasury saying we have very serious budgetary problems - and we can be sure they have seen the COA.
Really it seems to me the only question is just how big the cuts are and where they will fall. I suspect the answer is pretty big and everywhere!
To remind people there is also a great deal of useful discussion here from The Conversation.
As usual - no real news on the PCEHR Review.
More next week.
David.
