Medical cost hits low-income Australian families

Australian families will pay more for medical care following a backflip by the Government on what was painted in last year's election campaign as a "rock solid, iron-clad" commitment.

Seven months after promising not to change the safety net that pays patients 80 per cent of their out-of-pocket medical bills, Prime Minister John Howard has increased the qualifying threshold. It has been lifted from A$300 to A$500 ($322 to $540) for low-income and average wage-earners, and from A$700 to A$1000 ($750 to $1070) for high-income households.

The Doctors Reform Society says the higher costs will hit low-income families hardest and that a survey shows that cost is the reason that a third of Australians do not go to GPs.

"The announcement sends a clear message to our struggling patients that they cannot rely on government safety nets to access proper health care," society president Dr Tim Woodruff says. Under the safety-net scheme introduced a year ago, Medicare covers 80 per cent of out-of-hospital medical expenses, such as GP visits, x-rays and specialist treatment, once total spending in a year exceeds the threshold.

The safety net was opposed by many doctors and social welfare organisations, who believed it would be too costly to maintain and that extra funding should go to the Medicare scheme. Howard now says they were right, citing a blow-out in the cost from $A440m ($475) to A$1.3 billion ($1.4 billion).