Senate health inquiry: GP co-payment will increase SA hospital visits 'by 290,000 people'
The Federal Government's planned $7 GP co-payment would result in an extra 290,000 presentations a year at hospital emergency departments, South Australian health officials have told a Senate inquiry.
SA Health deputy chief executive Steve Archer told the select committee on health in Adelaide that the co-payment would also push waiting times from 20 minutes to 66 minutes.
He said the measure, proposed in the federal budget earlier this year, would cost the State Government an additional $80 million.
"Over the next four years, $444 million had been hardwired into the state's forward estimates," Mr Archer said.
"As far as the State Government is concerned, that is no longer available for us to be investing in health or other health-related services."
Tony Abbott dismisses fears
But Prime Minister Tony Abbott played down the suggestions and pointed to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to defend the GP co-payment.
"If it's fair and reasonable for patients accessing the PBS to face a modest co-payment, why can it be unfair and unreasonable for patients seeing a GP likewise to face a modest co-payment?" he said.
Mr Abbott blamed the Labor Party for "playing politics".
"You get your drugs for free in hospital. Out of hospital you pay the co-payment," he said.
"That hasn't produced a flood of people rushing into emergency departments, or if it has, it's something that emergency departments have learned to cope with."
But SA Greens Senator Penny Wright said the figures provided by the state's health officials were "alarming".
"If these Federal Government cuts go ahead, it will be devastating," she said.
Yesterday, Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton dismissed similar modelling from the New South Wales Government and said it had been cooked up by union sympathisers.
'Mad' policy should be scrapped: Premier
SA Premier Jay Weatherill said the co-payment would be high on his agenda when he met other state and territory leaders at tomorrow's Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting.
"This is a mad policy and it's the sort of nonsense policies you're going to get when Commonwealth and state governments don't cooperate, but actually retreat to their corner and just pretend to operate in isolation from each other," he said.
Mr Weatherill said he would argue for the policy to be scrapped along with other budget health cuts and ruled out charging a hospital co-payment to counter the GP co-payment.
