GPs defend schedule for charge of services

AUSTRALIA’S peak GP group has defended a secret list that recommends specialists charge more than the Medicare fee, saying successive governments and insurers “must take their share of the blame”.

The Australian Medical Association’s List of Services and Fees is provided to members at a cost and is also available to others who purchase the book every year, president Michael Gannon said yesterday.

The charges – some up to 10 times more than Medicare recommends – cover everything from births to replacement hip and knee surgeries, as well as cancer treatments.

Dr Gannon said successive governments and insurers must “take their share of the blame” after failing to index their schedules according to inflation.

“They dropped the football a long time ago,” he said. “The (AMA) list of fees is indexed every year according to various measures of inflation and in many ways reflects the true cost of delivering health care.

“The vast majority of doctors deliver services well below the AMA fees, but certainly the AMA list is closer to a list of truth than the Medicare schedule, which lost pace with the true cost of health care 10, 15, 20 years ago.”

Dr Gannon said the AMA list provided recommended fees but doctors still set their own.

“The reality is that most doctors use the insurer’s nogap schemes, recognising that substantial out-of-pocket costs are harmful to patients,” he said.