Urgent care clinics vs MyMedicare: Where does Mark Butler’s real interest in general practice lie?
The Minister for Health and Aged Care reminisced about the bad old days in his speech to the AMA last week.
The health minister’s recent speech to the AMA faithful had a theme running through it that was something like: do you remember the bad old times?
This was about the rocky history Labor governments have had with Australia’s biggest doctors’ union. Clearly, the cuts go deeper than political flesh wounds.
Mark Butler spent some time reminiscing about the ‘doctors’ dispute’ days when Neal Blewitt (health minister 40 years ago) was introducing Medicare, with full-page AMA ads in the newspapers, threats of strikes in hospitals and AMA injunctions to doctors never to bulk-bill.
He also referred to Ben Chifley introducing the PBS (80 years ago) and Gough Whitlam introducing Medibank (50 years ago).
