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Private Hospitals Back Medicare Gold
David Wroe, Jason Koutsoukis, and Misha Schubert, The Age
Australia
October 1, 2004
Labor's plan to give free hospital treatment to over-75s has won the all-important backing of private hospitals, who yesterday said the plan could work and would cut waiting lists.
After talks with Labor health spokeswoman Julia Gillard yesterday, the Australian Private Hospitals Association said hospitals would be able to meet the extra patient demand when the plan started in mid-2006.
This blunted an attack by Prime Minister John Howard, who argued that cutting waiting lists for the over-75s meant longer waits for younger patients.
But association chief Michael Roff said private hospitals could meet the extra demand without disadvantaging younger patients.
"There is some spare capacity (now)," he said. "We can plan to meet that extra demand between now and 2006."
Private hospitals average only 75 to 80 per cent occupancy.
Labor's $2.9 billion scheme, Medicare Gold, also received the endorsement of major non-profit private health provider Catholic Health Australia and two other big operators, while Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said the state's
hospitals could cope with any flood in patients.
Under the plan, the Federal Government would take responsibility for the hospital treatment of people aged 75 and older by buying hospital beds, either public or private, as required.
These patients would not need private hospital insurance and would not have to wait for a bed, Labor says.
Labor leader Mark Latham vowed hospitals would get the extra resources they needed.
Mr Howard said the Opposition's plan was "grossly underfunded", would lengthen waiting lists for younger patients and rob older people of a private room and their choice of doctor.
Branding the plan a "hoax", Mr Howard said it was a "matter of irrefutable common sense" that more surgery could not be done with existing resources.
He claimed Labor had undercosted the plan by 50 per cent, saying the real price tag was $4 billion a year.
"You can cut the waiting lists for over-75s - you can reduce them to zero," he said. "But the result of that, unless you have more beds and more doctors, will be that the waiting list for people under 75 will grow."
But Catholic Health Australia chief executive Francis Sullivan, who has long advocated a plan similar to Medicare Gold, said public hospitals could add 5000 admissions and the private sector 1500 admissions "without having to employ anybody extra".
"The capacity is already there," Mr Sullivan said. "I think once people see a program like this working it will encourage investment."
Labor expects patient admissions across all hospitals to grow by about 17 per cent in the first two years.
Mr Bracks said hospitals could handle an anticipated 8.5 per cent annual rise in admissions in the first two years.
"The answer is yes, because the Federal Government is going to employ more nurses and train more nurses," he said. "And yes because the Federal Government is going to employ more doctors and open more beds."
Mr Latham said Medicare Gold was properly calculated and would be submitted to Treasury under the charter of budget honesty.
However, Labor appeared inconsistent on some details. On Wednesday, it implied patients would face out-of-pocket costs only if they wanted "extra amenities" such as private rooms.
But yesterday Mr Latham said most patients would be covered for private rooms, while Ms Gillard acknowledged patients would face a bill if a doctor charged more than the price set by a Labor government.
Bruce Dixon, managing director of Melbourne-based Healthscope, with 28 hospitals nationwide, said Medicare Gold was an important reform that "breaks down that whole barrier between public and private".
Australia's largest private hospital group, Affinity Health, also backed the scheme, with managing director Robert Cooke telling the ABC that, while difficult to implement, Medicare Gold was worth trying.
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