Word: bulks
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...party that wants to make G.P. visits free has to convince doctors not to charge more than the government reimburses them: $A25.70 for a consultation of 15 min. or less. Labor under Mark Latham, a Whitlam prot?g?, has pledged to give doctors an extra $A5 for each bulk-billed consultation, plus monthly bonuses if they reach certain targets. Latham has affirmed Labor's "rock-solid determination" to lift the proportion of consultations that are bulk billed from 70% to 80%. Last week he made an additional pledge to make more visits to specialists free as part of a $A1 billion...
Once a Medicare critic, Prime Minister John Howard stunned the Opposition on Sept. 6 by announcing a $A1.8 billion package that allowed him to say: "We will go to this election being a better friend to Medicare." Like Labor, the Government will reward doctors who bulk bill. But it will also give more money back to patients charged upfront for their consultation. It's saying, in effect: bulk billing is important, but so is the right of doctors to charge above the standard fee when they see fit. Having abandoned plans to euthanize it, the Coalition is shaping Medicare...
...training and over 6,000 consultations a year entitle them to an annual income higher than the $A120,000 the average G.P. earns. They also resent any plan aimed at controlling their charging. "I forewarn the Labor Party," says A.M.A. president Bill Glasson, "not to pursue this fever about bulk billing." It may result, doctors say, in many G.P.s either leaving the workforce or congregating in areas where more people are prepared to pay to see a doctor. The Rural Doctors Association says medicos in remote areas are doing it particularly hard: as well as bearing higher costs than their...
Deeble watches the evolution of health policy with interest. If bulk billing came to mean that patients paid a small sum from their own pockets, he confides, he could accept that. But he tends to think any bulk-billing crisis has been "manufactured" on behalf of doctors who resent that twentysomething stockbrokers earn more than they do. "The government could limit the doctors' charges under Medicare," Deeble says. "It's just that there's been a general agreement that the blood on the ground would be so bad that they never would. But I think some day they might have...
Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd and Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II said yesterday they reversed the decision because student groups need to order supplies in bulk and online—an action that requires a credit or debit card...