Decisions made by Tony Abbott when he was health minister will soon cause a blowout in healthcare costs dwarfing the money saved by introducing a $6 fee for GP visits, a health workforce expert says.
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As health minister in the Howard government, Mr Abbott oversaw a massive expansion of new medical schools and student intakes, leading to an oversupply of graduating doctors, said Peter Brooks, former director of the Australian Health Workforce Institute and now a professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Australia is expected to have 2811 superfluous doctors by 2025, based on projections in a March 2012 report by the government body Health Workforce Australia. The figure assumes a modest 5 per cent increase in productivity in the healthcare system.
Health lobby groups often said Australia would be short 2700 doctors by 2025, but the figure was misleading because it assumed no productivity gains would be made, Professor Brooks said.
The boom in medical graduates would ''lead to a blowout in costs'' with doctors already giving patients too many unnecessary procedures so they could earn a good living in Australia's fee-for-service system, Professor Brooks said.
At least $20 billion of ''low value'' medical procedures were already being done every year in Australia, he said. If Mr Abbott wanted a ''sustainable'' healthcare system, he should address these multibillion dollar structural healthcare problems rather than "fiddling around" with fees for GP visits, Professor Brooks said.
The Medicare controversy kicked off at the weekend with reports of a submission to the government's commission of audit from Mr Abbott's former health adviser, Terry Barnes. Mr Barnes said the government would save $750 million over four years by forcing patients who are bulk-billed to pay $6 to visit their GP for each of the first 12 visits a year.
A spokeswoman for Mr Abbott said on Wednesday the Coalition ''won't be commenting on speculation around what the commission of audit may or may not recommend''. ''Labor spent a lot of money on creating huge health bureaucracies,'' she said.
''The Coalition government is committed to directing more of that money back to delivering and improving frontline services for patients.''
The debate over the $6 GP fee - which experts say will harm the poorest and sickest Australians - was obscuring a more important debate over healthcare costs, Professor Brooks said.
Australian governments had become ''doctor obsessed'', ignoring evidence that many of the tasks performed by doctors could be given to other health professionals such as pharmacists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
Health Workforce Australia reports that in 2003, 1889 students began medical degrees. By 2012 there were 3686 students starting medicine. Even with international students excluded, the medical education peak body, Medical Deans Australia, said medical graduates more than doubled between 1996 and 2012.
