In Australia, up to 80% of general practitioners accept the rebate provided by Medicare as the total cost of their medical consultation service. Essentially that is to say that they provide to Australian citizens with a Medicare card a “free” consultation service with no out-of-pocket cost to the patient (excluding medications sold through a private pharmacist). That’s a great thing for patients! They can’t use the ‘I don’t have enough money to go see a doctor’ excuse too often since most GPs will see them for "free". Of course, the doctor has to get paid, too – because medicine is a job, not a charity – and Medicare will pay him for doing his job. However, remember, how Medicare is a rebate and not meant as full payment of the doctor’s service?...
There is a big group of people in non-government health care systems (e.g. private allied health professionals, private medical specialists, and around 20% of general practice doctors) who don’t accept the Medicare rebate as full payment for the service they provide. Are they the “better” health professionals, worthy of more money than Medicare provides for? Are they greedy ‘fat cats’ like some politicians will call them? No. They are the same as other health care professionals providing similar services. Often they are the same people who will see some patients at a fully-subsidised cost or charge an additional fee on top of the rebate. They’re not bad people; they are just people in paid employment. They’re people working in a private system practising within their legal right to set their own fees for their service, often actually very realistic fees to cover the true costs of doing their job. Unfortunately, because both types of practitioners operate within the same country, the one who charges what he or she has deemed his service is worth is seen as some sort of evil, money-hungry, exploitative person. Conversely, the one who provides “free” (to the patient) services is often considered less than – and this is what most general practitioners in the eyes of the public are seen as.
It is interesting how the two types of professionals are viewed. I worked in a medical centre for a time while I was at uni, and the practice had half bulk-billing, half fee-paying doctors. The private docs seemed to be perceived by the majority of the client base as special and 'they must be a bit better since you have to pay for them'. They all seemed great to me, the only difference I noticed in their practices was that the docs who charged saw fewer patients as their appointments were longer.
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