The federal government has “put the crooks on notice” amid reports the Medicare system is being rorted by up up to $8 billion a year.
Ministers Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek were responding on Monday to a joint Nine and ABC investigation that found some practitioners are ripping off the system by charging for services never delivered.
Government Services and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said while the “vast majority” of general practitioners did the right thing, payments integrity was a problem.
“It drives taxpayers to despair if they think that some people are opportunistically rorting the system,” he told Nine’s Today show on Monday.
“Crooks do leave footprints … obviously we have got to make sure there is complete confidence in the system but we need to put the crooks on notice that ‘you will get caught’.”
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, a former health minister, told Seven’s Sunrise program the report was shocking.
“We need to come down on these people like a ton of bricks because Australians feel protective of Medicare and they want to keep Medicare and they love the way our health system works, but it cannot work if you have people ripping it off,” she said.
“For those people who are ripping it off, they need to face the full consequences of the law.”
According to the ABC and Nine investigation, some doctors have been billing dead people and falsifying patient medical records to lift their incomes. Other were making mistakes on claims.
Medicare expert Margaret Faux estimates the waste and rorts cost the system up to $8 billion a year, according to the ABC.
© AAP 2022
