Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday abandoned a plan to radically reshape Australia’s universal healthcare system by charging patients a fee to see their doctor.
The A$7 (US$6) “copayment” fee, which had been included in an unpopular May budget, was heavily criticized by the opposition and many in the healthcare sphere as a sign that Australia was moving toward a US healthcare model.
The policy reversal is the latest in a string for Abbott, whose Liberal-National coalition government has hit record low approval ratings.
“The [A]$7 Medicare copayment measure announced in the 2014-15 budget will no longer proceed,” Abbott said in a press release. “The government has listened to the views of the community.”
Instead, the government will cut the rebate it pays to doctors, he said, encouraging them to charge adults a A$5 fee at their discretion, while children, elderly people and those on state allowances would be exempt.
The government said that the changes would save A$3.5 billion over four years — A$100 million less than originally proposed in the budget.
The move was sharply criticized by the opposition Labor Party and the Greens Party, both of whom accused Abbott of resorting to the use of regulatory changes to the healthcare system because he was too weak politically to bring about changes through legislation.
“He’s only interested in protecting himself; that’s what has motivated today,” Labor Party leader Bill Shorten told reporters. “It’s still a broken promise.”
Faced with a collapse in prices for commodities produced by Australia and an unruly upper house Senate that has held Abbott’s first budget hostage since May, voters have abandoned his conservative government more quickly than any other in three decades.
Australia, by far the world’s biggest exporter of iron ore and coal, has been battered by a worldwide fall in commodity prices. Iron prices have plunged 44 percent so far this year to less than US$76 a tonne.
Abbott warned about ballooning deficits when he released a budget packed with deregulation moves, new levies and spending cuts, but the public has never accepted his plan.
Last week, Australian Minister of Education Christopher Pyne shelved for the year the government’s plan to deregulate university fees after failing to garner enough votes to push it through parliament.
On Sunday, Abbott succumbed to pressure and radically pared back his signature landmark paid parental leave scheme, which had upset big business and many in his own party.
Despite significant accomplishments this year — concluding free-trade deals with Japan, South Korea and China, and hosting the G20 leaders summit — the Labor Party has surged ahead of the government by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent in the latest Newspoll released on Nov. 18.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS