“Some people are like Slinkies - not really good for anything,
but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.”
Sunday, August 8, 2010
"Don't let Labor's health cuts be the death of you"
Singo's advert released this weekend.
I've just seen it, it's not bad. Not only does it talk about the cuts to rebatesfor x-rays and blood tests, but it also has a go at the non-existent super clinics...
That ad will please our GP. Most of her patients are elderly and every time Roxoff reduces a benefit, GP has to spend hours trawling the benefits documents to try and fine a substitute service for her impoverished patients.
At the place where I work the health services (a doctors' surgery which is also staffed with two nurses), they bulk bill. Not only do they look after students and staff, but there are some external patients that the surgery takes care of, although the doctor is always booked out on the days he is in attendance.
Sometime in the past 12 months or so the government has I think cut the rebate for blood tests. Where once you could have it bulk billed and the pathologist was happy to accept that as payment, now the students and everyone must pay $40 up front, or be sent an account which is over $30 more than the rebate, which makes the actual cash paid by the patient more than $70.
The pathologist which had always allowed students to have blood tests bulk billed without charging them and wanted to start charging the $40 up front had no way to collect that $40 on the spot and expected the doctor to collect it (the pathologist's phlebotomists collect blood in the afternoon daily when the doctor is on duty).
The medical centre jacked up about the students having to pay up front, many of them don't have $40 to spare and those who didn't would be sent an account for the full amount which they'd have to pay, and they decided to change their provider.
I had cause to have a blood test a while back (late last year, which I still haven’t claimed from Medicare!), and I asked them to send an account rather than put it on my credit card. BIG MISTAKE. Had I paid the $40 up front I would have been square with them. When the account arrived it was for about $129 or so, and the Medicare rebate is only about $56, so they were getting about $33 more by me getting an account sent out. I complained that I was not told I’d be paying over $30 more if I had an account sent out so I said it was unfair to charge me more. They knocked back the charge to the benefit plus $40 as it should have been.
I can’t tell you how cranky this makes me.
I am disgusted that many age pensioners have to pay the same as me to see a specialist.
3 comments:
That ad will please our GP.
Most of her patients are elderly and every time Roxoff reduces a benefit, GP has to spend hours trawling the benefits documents to try and fine a substitute service for her impoverished patients.
At the place where I work the health services (a doctors' surgery which is also staffed with two nurses), they bulk bill. Not only do they look after students and staff, but there are some external patients that the surgery takes care of, although the doctor is always booked out on the days he is in attendance.
Sometime in the past 12 months or so the government has I think cut the rebate for blood tests. Where once you could have it bulk billed and the pathologist was happy to accept that as payment, now the students and everyone must pay $40 up front, or be sent an account which is over $30 more than the rebate, which makes the actual cash paid by the patient more than $70.
The pathologist which had always allowed students to have blood tests bulk billed without charging them and wanted to start charging the $40 up front had no way to collect that $40 on the spot and expected the doctor to collect it (the pathologist's phlebotomists collect blood in the afternoon daily when the doctor is on duty).
The medical centre jacked up about the students having to pay up front, many of them don't have $40 to spare and those who didn't would be sent an account for the full amount which they'd have to pay, and they decided to change their provider.
I had cause to have a blood test a while back (late last year, which I still haven’t claimed from Medicare!), and I asked them to send an account rather than put it on my credit card. BIG MISTAKE. Had I paid the $40 up front I would have been square with them. When the account arrived it was for about $129 or so, and the Medicare rebate is only about $56, so they were getting about $33 more by me getting an account sent out. I complained that I was not told I’d be paying over $30 more if I had an account sent out so I said it was unfair to charge me more. They knocked back the charge to the benefit plus $40 as it should have been.
I can’t tell you how cranky this makes me.
I am disgusted that many age pensioners have to pay the same as me to see a specialist.
I have been looking for the ad online, can't seem to find it.
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