Doctors stand to get a large pay rise even though the $7 GP fee would be cut to $6.15 under an AMA plan designed to end a Senate impasse over the controversial budget measure.
Adopting the AMA plan would also erode 97 per cent of planned budget savings, said Health Minister Peter Dutton.
Under the AMA’s alternative model to the government’s $7 co-payment plan, children and pensioners would have their GP fee paid by taxpayers.
Almost half the population won’t pay the $7 GP fee under an AMA compromise.
It proposes a minimum co-payment of $6.15 but, unlike the government’s plan, none of it will go to a medical research future fund.
Instead it will be pocketed by GPs.
Doctors want to protect concession card holders and children under 16 by having the government pay the co-payment.
Aged care and home visits would be exempt under the AMA plan, together with treatment for mental health and chronic disease.
Doctors also oppose the planned $5 cut to the Medicare rebate, which would leave them out of pocket if they don’t charge the co-payment.
Mr Dutton, who has been considering the AMA proposal for three weeks, said it would slash government savings from an estimated $3.5 billion over five years to about $100 million.
AMA president Brian Owler defended what amounts to a pay rise for doctors, saying GPs should be rewarded for their frontline role.
It was about getting an investment into general practice and asking those patients who could afford to pay to make a modest contribution, he said.
The government is struggling to garner sufficient support in the Senate for the co-payment, with Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers opposed to its amount and scope.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Labor would not support a GP co-payment of any type, and urged the government to scrap the idea.
“If they’re going to back down part of the way, get the pain out of the way and just scrap the rotten idea,’’ he told reporters in Melbourne.
Greens health spokesman Richard Di Natale, a former GP, said no amount of tinkering or adjustments could save “this dog of a policy’’.
“Putting a price barrier between patients and their doctors is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing,’’ he said.
Earlier today, Tony Abbott said pensioners should expect to pay the full $7 co-payment, and indicated he was against exempting children as well.
He questioned why both groups should be excluded when they were required to make a contribution to taxpayer-subsidised medicines.
“Sometimes you’ve got to pay something to appreciate what you’re getting,’’ he said.