The outgoing president of the Australian Medical Association, Associate Professor Brian Owler, has delivered a scathing attack on the Coalition government, describing the past two years as “a period of lost opportunity in health policy”.
Speaking at the peak medical body’s national conference on Friday, Owler said his presidency, which began in 2014, coincided with “a turbulent time in Australian politics” including the government’s budget announcement of a patient co-payment for GP visits.
Peter Dutton refused to consult with the AMA on the issue, Owler said.
“In my first meeting as AMA president, I met with the [then] health minister, Peter Dutton, who delivered an ultimatum: ‘As I see it,’ he said, ‘the AMA can either support the government’s co-payment plans or you can be on the outside’,” Owler said.
“It was an easy choice. I was not going to sell out our members, and I certainly wasn’t going to abandon our patients.”
Owler said he worked with the AMA to come up with an alternative policy which included a minimum co-payment charge that would not alter the Medicare rebate and built-in protections for the elderly, the young and the vulnerable.
But when he presented this plan to Dutton, Owler said he was met with hostility.
“In return, the minister ignored the plan and, when we finally released it publicly, he called a news conference to describe our plan as a ‘cash grab by greedy doctors’.
“So much for working closely with minister Dutton.”
Predictably, the Coalition failed to gather the Senate support needed to introduce the measure, and it was scrapped.
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