Medicare: Federal Government seeks to privatise payment system; public service union raises fears of job cuts

Updated

Medicare payments could be processed by private providers as the Federal Government looks to cut the size of the public service.

The Government is asking companies to register expressions of interests for developing a new system of taking claims and paying out benefits.

It would cover $29 billion a year in Medicare, PBS and veterans' health payments.

Patients would be able to make claims and receive benefits from outlets other than Medicare offices. But existing Medicare offices would not close.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says it could be a quicker and cheaper way of processing claims.

"We are exploring various avenues of delivering these services more effectively," he said.

"We are putting into effect what we said we would do on budget night.

"That is, to explore the best possible ways of ensuring that Australians get swift and effective access to services and that's what you'd expect a good government to do."

Australia Post has previously flagged it wants to take over the processing responsibility from the Department of Human Services.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) says staff are stunned by plans to break up the Commonwealth's largest department.

The national secretary of the CPSU, Nadine Flood, says 5,000 to 10,000 public service jobs could be cut if the provision of Medicare payments is outsourced.

"Well this is a tender to sell off Medicare functions with tens of thousands of Medicare worker's jobs potentially at risk," she said.

"Australians are wary about privatisation and outsourcing because so often they pay more and get less, the last place we want that to happen is with something as critical as Medicare."

Topics: health-policy, health, health-insurance, business-economics-and-finance, government-and-politics, federal-government, public-sector, australia

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