The federal Department of Health has admitted that it failed to conduct in-depth analysis or research on the social impact of Medicare co-payments before the government announced its policy.



Representatives from Treasury and the departments of Health and Finance were pressed by a Senate committee on Thursday about what advice they had provided to the government on the implications of increasing costs for GP consultations.



“You haven’t done any specific research on co-payments, is that correct?” Labor senator Doug Cameron asked the panel of eight senior public servants.



“I’m unaware of any substantive work in Australia specifically about the impact of something like [the] Medicare co-payment and reduction in rebate,” the deputy secretary of the Health Department, Andrew Stuart, said.



“There are significant methodological difficulties and significant time required to do any kind of meaningful research on co-payments,” he said.



The department did not say if it was asked to conduct research by the federal government before it announced the co-payment policy in the 2014 federal budget. Instead, the department undertook an extensive review of international research. But Stuart admits that data is old and not necessarily applicable.

“The international material and research is very equivocal and not directly related to the current Australian situation,” Stuart said.



“You say you rely on international evidence and research, and when I ask if you’ve done any of your own you say no, and then I ask what is the international evidence, you say it’s equivocal, and you have to take into account the specific circumstances in Australia. Who has been looking at the specific circumstances in Australia?” Cameron asked.



Stuart answered that the department had “read the available evidence”.



The committee members became frustrated at the lack of answers given, and asked that the committee be rescheduled to allow for further questioning.



“I am very worried that this [co-payment] policy has been made without any evidence base,” Cameron said, before leaving the committee.



The government ditched a plan unveiled in the last federal budget to charge patients $7 for seeing a GP.



It replaced the policy with a plan to reduce the rebate for GP visits by $5, and cut the rebate for consultations under 10 minutes by $20. Public outcry and crossbench dissatisfaction caused the new health minister Sussan Ley to scrap the $20 rebate cut last month.



Former health minister Peter Dutton was criticised by health professionals for failing to discuss the co-payment policy with the industry.



Ley is currently engaging in a consultation process with a number of healthcare groups.

