Morning all,
I went to my doc last week as I have had some abdominal pains and wanted it checked, the practice no longer bulk bills so I paid the $30 Gap fee.
He recommended a CT scan (Bulk Billed) which I did.
Now to get my results I have a Telehealth appointment with the Dr this afternoon, on the confirmation text I received yesterday it mentioned that there is another $30 Gap Fee for the appointment.
Does this seem fair?
Genuinely interested in others thoughts here.
Does this seem fair?
Well no, but what can we do about it… It however did one thing though. I realised with gap fee being charged we have reduced the number of visits. Nowadays for non urgent matters we simply wait out till next time we are at gp…
Ironically, you've hit the nail right on the head.
Put an explicit charge on something and people will at least consider whether they need to incur the expense. Make it "free" and people will over-consume.
When the proposal was put that GP visits cost $7, effectively capped a $70 a year (I think those were the numbers), and with various safeguards for genuine low income cases, the hue and cry was simply ridiculous. Quite frankly, if someone can't come up with a maximum $70 a year to manage their personal health situation, they need to have a close look at their spending patterns.
Quite frankly, if someone can't come up with a maximum $70…
It’s not really this though. It’s alot of factors and frustrations with gp clinics in general… atleast for me
I call to remove all the limits on number of medical seats a university can offer. Also increase the number of skilled immigrants who can practice. It's practically a monopoly for the doctors at the moment. #freemarket
Yep, if it were a free market system GPs would be plentiful, then all the moaning about GPs doing it "tough" would be irrelevant because all the other Aussies doing it "tough" but without as severely restricted competition are on the same playing field. The job would be paid for how hard and how crappy it is, like most other ordinary jobs.
100% Some of the students currently have no other qualifications than my daddy is rich. I guess they never practice either.
When you stop visiting they will stop charging you.
Just like every other service provider.
I have a medical degree but will never be a GP. It is poorly rewarded and poorly appreciated job.
25 years ago it was different, but here we are.
I have seen patients ask their GP to bulk bill them as they are saving up for an overseas holiday.
My wife had a pensioner refuse to pay the gap but bragged about their 25 ft yacht. I guess they are expensive to maintain and run.
Wife went for GP for some tests and told to make an appt a few days later for results. Attended the follow up appointment and was told results not in yet and was charged for that appointment, then had to attend a few days later to get the results when they were in and got charged again! I was slightly pissed off, good thing I was away at the time.
=== Prediction of General Practice 2029 ===
I'm going to give some of you a reality check. Given the trajectory of the medical system,
~ Aging population
~ Sicker population
~ More litigious
~ Rebate not keeping up with CPI and expenses
~ Patients are becoming more entitled and nasty
GP's beginning their career are already abandoning the ship for non-patient facing roles. They would rather take a pay cut than face the public— who, during COVID, became aggressive and impatient. A negative character flaw which barely receded after the masks came off. General physicians barely want to stay in this system as it is, especially given the little respect they receive and solidified by patients refusing to pay the gap at the counter. Theft masquerading as "principled" protest for the myth of universal healthcare.
My prediction is this, within five years time we enter a phase where the Boomer population reach the median life-span. This will cause such immense strain on the system, patient wait times blow out to a month perhaps two. You will moan and complain about it, but you will stomach the $100 gap fee because, just cos. You have to because the doctors who suffer this current system only do so to make bank. As a result, the ED system gets overwhelmed leading to a mass exodus of already strained workers.
As prices become exorbitant, black market operators will emerge. Who will pay $100 + pharmacy costs for amoxicillin? Once this occurs you know you have reached critical mass.
At this point of time the government, grasping at straws, turn to the following solutions after this multi-disciplinary Medicare failure (and it will be a failure). Pharmacists, nurses and perhaps tertiary providers like physios will be given new powers to prescribe higher schedule drugs. Overseas telehealth may be given a green light, partner countries? SE Asia? India?
Finally the birth of the AI doctor will be hastily greenlit. A MyGov initiative, you enter a chatbot / phone bot where they diagnose basic coughs, colds, prescribe some drugs and then refer you to the ED or GP for more difficult issues. For those complex cases, you have no choice but to pay. And you know what, when that does happen, will you be happy to get an appointment to see the GP? No. Your average Australian will be angry and entitled like we can all see. Reinforcing the $110 fee they now charge.
So what can you do? Exercise, eat healthy and be nice to your GP, you never know when you need a black-market GP.
So many bitter GPs in the Ozbargain community, looks like you guys could really use the bargains lol.
Also the Australian universal healthcare wasn't a 'myth' previously, it is only gone now because we need to divert federal Budget funds to buy hundreds of Billions worth of American submarines.
Your timelines are off.
My prediction is this:
-Pharmacists and Nurses take over the majority of the GP roles and the government pays them for this - its cheaper for the government to pay pharmacists and nurses then it is to pay doctors
-Greenlight mass immigration of doctors, removing the moratorium requirements, which helps fix the supply side, which will force more GPs to bulk bill or else be quiet/empty. This stops the government needing to increase the medicare rebate.
If I was the government, that's what I'd do to save money. Sure you'll piss a lot of doctors off, but who cares.
-Pharmacists and Nurses take over the majority of the GP roles and the government pays them for this - its cheaper for the government to pay pharmacists and nurses then it is to pay doctors
Do this and then watch health outcomes drop off. Just look at the US health system where they are doing exactly this, letting nurse practitioners (2 year diploma) and physician assistants (4 year degree) play doctor instead of hiring trained doctors (minimum 8 years training to become an independent GP).
Sure it’s cheaper but are you prepared to have more missed errors that will affect patient care? Missed diagnoses, medication errors, inappropriate management plan etc.
Health outcomes take years to play out. Election cycles are shorter. Pharmacy Guild Money +++, coupled with cheaper health budget. More politically palatable than increasing the medicare levy. Playing devils advocate here.
Hello, i paid $4000 for a one way flight and they got me to my destination. I decided i didn't want to stay there and booked a flight back home for $4000. Since i didnt want to stay is this fair to pay? Thanks
Ha ha, then I called my lawyer asking them to if a single sentence in a contract was ok. It took them only 2 minutes and said it was all fine.
Then they sent me a $50 bill— Does that seem fair?
If they sent you $50 you are a genius, getting them to pay you for doing work for you.
That is Art.
An average ozbargainer with a taxable income of 200k, is paying 4k in Medicare Levy and additional 2.5k in private insurance annually. Now they have to pay gap fees and specialist fees, possibly dental. Let's say it's another 500 bringing it to a total of 7k out of pocket for a so called world's leading public health system.
A US citizen, earning in the same bracket as an average ozbargainer pays 0 for private insurance, because it is usually covered in the compensation plan. Even if they pay it themselves it's avg 400 a month and would set them back under 5k a year.
In conclusion, ozbargainers don't benefit from Australias public health care system at all and are being milked for each doctor visit.
Just on the question of getting the results direct, I recently had a CT scan to look at my Kidneys, I was sent the results as a link that was valid for 1000 days.
I had to learn a bit about how to use the viewer software but was able to look inside my body which was pretty cool.
If you know what you are doing then you can just get a copy of the scan and do the analysis yourself.
Usually it will have a few notes by the pathology firm anyway.
e.g. I just get the blood test results myself and analyse it myself… Your Local GP usually will not even pick up on most of the material because they only allocate around 15 mins to your session.
If you or your kids want to become a doctor, don't become a GP. You just get treated like shit by the government and patients alike. Become a specialist such as pathologist or dermatologist. Then you charge whatever you want and everybody expects a huge gap fee.
Agreed, GP is the punching bag of the medical workforce and this forum and mainstream media is the evidence. But please remember that GPs are specialists in primary care, they have exams to sit and pass whilst working full-time too!
Just google your symptoms and do your own tests and interpret the results
It's easy and free
Check anything you don't understand on wikipedia
GPs don't actually have any real knowledge worth knowing anyway because they used to bulk bill and gave questionable knowledge because its free. Now that they're charging you money, the ruse is up
Instead of spending $30 on your health and your body, you should save it and spend on other more important things like a new mobile phone or save it for your next restaurant meal or do some online shopping that will make you happy.
Don't worry about getting health information from a GP. They're useless now we have ChatGPT. It sounds like you don't trust them anyway
Save the money for a plumber when a pipe breaks cos you're gonna need it for that $400 bill
Actually you shouldn't pay for your medication either, just grab it and go because we should all have free medical care and free medications
$30 for a medical consult is just ridiculously high
We should just get rid of medicare, cut medicare levy and everyone look after themselves like in the USA. I heard it's a lot cheaper to do it that way.
No, it doesn't seem fair.
My GP would never charge for a follow up test result consultation. If I had to go in they would bulk bill me, or a phone call with the results.
Its funny in Australia that healthcare charges are labelled unfair or rip off with anything medical but people are happy to pay for a few cocktails and don't even sneeze at the expense. Paying for preventative care is a bargain compared to treatment costs when things eventually go wrong…..then people are willing to pay 'anything' but the unfortunately there's no money that can reverse the things that have gone wrong. The health system is buckling in Oz. Yes there will be a debate on both sides of the story….some people rorting it, the government not doing a great job & so forth. But no matter how much whingeing we can do as general public, lets say there is a far smaller medical team versus general people like us. The future is dark for health…..regardless if you're talking about seeing a doctor OR buying your meds. So staying healthy & paying for that occasional $30 gap is well worth what you might be up for in the future I'd say.
I got put in the penalty box for something so haven't been able to reply.
Long story short I've paid the Gap 3 times now
1. Initial consult - referral to get a CT & referral to Specialist
2. To get my initial results and referral to get another CT & X-ray
3. To get my 2nd round of results.
I'm not too worried about the cost as I'm lucky and it doesn't effect me as much. I just feel for those that maybe can't afford to pay this in a 2 week period, the practice won't give out the results report unless you see the Doctor (who just reads the report from the imaging place anyway…)
Anywayssss @mods we can probably close this thread off now.
What you can do is link your Medicare & My Health account to myGov, then you can log into my health and view results, HOWEVER you may not know how to read them because they are in a different language called medicalanese.
The medical imaging place provides a simplified report that my doctor reads out to me word for word…
Only 14% medical students are going into General Practice specialty training.
It used to be 50%.
Part of the reason is this expectation that all health care should be free.
The GP rebate is decades behind inflation from when it started.
If you don't want to pay a measly $30 for your GPs time, then he/she probably doesn't want you as a patient.
Good luck with your life expectancy and chronic disease management if this is how you value your primary care specialist.