Yes, Medicare is broken, but fraud is not the main story

Aggressive compliance and subjective notions on what Medicare can and may’t deal with usually are not the proper options to repair the business.

(Picture: Zennie/Personal Media)

A joint investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the ABC’s 7.30 yesterday prompt {that a} almost third of Medicare spending was “wasted” in a mix of fraud, rorting, errors, inappropriate billing and overservicing, to a mixed estimate of $8 billion yearly.

This caught the eye of docs, lay folks and the well being minister — however it’s a report that ought to be handled with warning.  

There’s little doubt that there are fraudulent and dangerous religion actors in healthcare, whether or not particular person practitioners or firms — and all are expensive for our valuable common healthcare system. However an accusation of this magnitude requires nuance and readability. Fraud is clearly unacceptable and may by no means happen. However on this investigation, bundled in with fraud was a set of different offences contributing to this so-called “leakage” — comparable to billing errors, perceived overservicing and low-value care.

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Originally published at Gold Coast News HQ