As the Abbott government casts around for a third version of its Medicare copayment policy, it’s surely time for it to ask the basic question: “Why are we doing this again?”

The reasons for abandoning the second copayment policy are clear: voters hated it; doctors were going to the barricades over it; it wasn’t going to pass the Senate; it was going to cause serious trouble for Campbell Newman’s Queensland election campaign.

In short, they were political. (And foreseeable, but that’s another story.)

But the policy reasons for cutting Medicare in the first place have been various and confusing – to return savings to the budget but also to provide money for a medical research fund, to reduce “unnecessary” visits to the doctor, to force payment from those who can afford it and to “save” the long-term future of a scheme with costs “ballooning out of control”.

“Medicare will not survive in the long term without changes to make it sustainable,” the new health minister, Sussan Ley, said, repeating a talking point the government has been using since last year’s budget as she fronted for the unenviable task of half-ditching a policy conceived before she took over the portfolio. (The $5 rebate cut slated for July will stay.)

“In the last decade, spending on Medicare has more than doubled from $8bn in 2004 to $20bn today, yet we raise only $10bn from the Medicare levy. Spending is projected to climb to $34bn in the next decade to 2024,” she said.

But a few facts quickly raise questions about whether this rationale makes sense.

• As the Grattan Institute’s health program director, Stephen Duckett, points out, if the numbers are adjusted for population growth and inflation, the increase in spending over the decade isn’t 200%, but closer to 50%. Whether or not 50% is “sustainable” depends on whether we’re getting value for money for our extra government spending. But there’s good evidence that we are. We have much lower health spending than other advanced economies (the US, for example, spends 17.7% of its GDP on health compared with Australia’s 9.5%) and we have better average life expectancy or, to use a different measure, Australia’s “amenable death rate” (death from illnesses that can be prevented) has for the past decade been steadily falling. And spending money on primary care – stopping people from getting sick – is far more efficient than spending it on hospital admissions later. So why look for savings from GPs?

• The fact that the Medicare levy raises “only” $10bn of the $20bn we are spending on Medicare is another example of spin-by-numbers. It sounds bad if you don’t take into account the fact that the Medicare levy never has paid for all government spending on Medicare. The proportion it paid for in 2014 was a little lower than in 2003, but slightly higher than the previous year, as this table – prepared from a parliamentary library paper – shows. Is is entirely unclear what proportion of Medicare costs the minister thinks the levy should cover. The 55% it currently covers is not much lower than its historical average. Ley told Guardian Australia it was “clear that revenue raised from the Medicare levy, as a proportion of total spending, would not keep pace with growing cost of Medicare”.
• read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/16/as-sussan-ley-tries-to-patch-the-cuts-to-medicare-the-question-is-why

Tony Abbott is a bad actor... really bad. He would not cut it in a school play production if he had not the support of 20th Century-Fox, Uncle Rupe, who has propelled him to the world stage...

Tony Abbott lies, fudges and never learnt to walk. THis morning, a certain Peter martin tells us that Tony Abbott is letting the deal of the century go pass.... Thank god!... See Peter Martin thinks that by borrowing 100 billion clams on the bond market, Tony Turdy could build whatever he wishes... Roads, fast trains and his crummy NBN...

Hell no... Peter the only two things worth investing in, things that would protect us from the heat of the future, are renewables and a proper NBN. Anything else would bite us in the bum. One can do a "commercial" analysis of renewable energy and it comes up trumps. One of the problem for CONservatives with this is that the cut for the capitalists geezers becomes too small, because the cost of generating energy becomes so cheap. They prefer costlier stuff that never pays itself off which one can set as private companies feeding from the government tits (I mean teats). Such as nuclear energy, fast trains and so forth, things that cost a packet to run and NEVER EVER  make a profit, except for the government subsidies.

So no. It's great that Tony Abbott is an iiddiiottt and does not see the opportunity to "borrow" in the corner of his left eye... Borrowing more goes against his grain of scrounging and against his vice of making everyone's life a misery, all to turn government finances into surpluses and dance on a pile of fool's gold...

Meanwhile, Turdy's henchmen want to make life for REAL Australian actors as miserable as possible...