Posted by Michael Wonder on 30 May 2017
$55,000 spent but hospital funding reform ‘will never be policy’
30 May 2017 - A proposal to pay hospitals in a similar way to Medicare’s funding of GPs has been ruled out as Turnbull government policy, despite a taskforce having spent $55,000 considering the concept.
Health Minister Greg Hunt yesterday quickly dismissed reports in Fairfax newspapers that an independently convened taskforce funded by the Department of Health was still canvassing a commonwealth hospital benefit.
Such a benefit — the result of pooled commonwealth public-hospital funding, in-hospital Medicare benefits and the private-health insurance rebate — would be paid to public and private hospitals and represent the biggest structural change since Rudd-Gillard reforms.
