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I wonder how many Australians, like me, have found communicating with our national health care bureaucracy, Medicare, about as easy as winning Lotto? It shouldn’t be that hard, Boomer — after all, the website features a 24-hour contact number, right?
Well, yes. But after finding that a refund of $41.40 owing on my wife’s recent visit to our non-bulk billing medical centre hadn’t made it back to our bank account in more than a week, despite a receipt showing it had been paid, she visited the GP’s office and was told she would have to contact Medicare.
“It’s obviously been paid somewhere,” was her helpful advice. Maybe, but not to us. How many other people even bother to check and how many other “refunds” end up “somewhere”? So I got on the phone to the giant health entity to enquire how that could happen.
I didn’t really expect a human to answer the call – what bureaucracy or big business does that these days? So I listened to the pleasant female-sounding AI bot asking what the call was about in a couple of words, I said “Unpaid refund”. She/it then rattled off a variety of numbered options, I chose one that sounded appropriate but was then told I could find the answer to various questions via the Medicare app or through their MyGov link.
“Have a nice day,” she/it concluded in the same cheery voice before hanging up on me.
I had already had a look on MyGov and checked the list of refunds paid. This latest one wasn’t included.
So I called the Medicare hotline again, went through the options with Bot Lady and chose the last on the list: speak to an operator. Finally I might get somewhere, but then the same pleasant voice told me that because of the volume of calls, none was available.
“Try again later..” Click.
No option of waiting in a queue for an hour listening to the same boring tune played over and over, no option of requesting a call-back which some non-government service providers do actually include when inquiries reach overload. With a slight trace of steam coming out my ears, I went on-line again in an attempt to find another way of contact — like, you know, an email address.
That should be simple and easy, let alone logical, and it would relieve pressure on their “24 hour, seven days a week” call centre. Or so I thought, and after searching through a multitude of word salads I did finally discover what was claimed to be an email address, which I copied and pasted into an address bar, and cc’d my own address.
I then outlined the case of the missing refund, attached a copy of the receipt stating it had been paid, and asked for the matter to be rectified.
A second after hitting send, it bounced back with the message that the address wasn’t recognised. More steam from the ears – was it an old address or did it only apply in some other state? Back online again, now searching all the Medicare links and options through MyGov. I finally found one for complaints, so let’s try that!
Again there were numerous options concerningwhat the complaint might entail but finally I managed to type a message about the missing refund and asked for it to be paid. I also included the suggestion that they could save everyone a lot of bother if they just provided a genuine contact email address. They did give me a feedback number a few days ago, but at the time of writing there has been no response.
The Albanese government made a big fanfare announcing its $6.1 billion “Strengthening Medicare reforms” last October, claiming it was “the largest investment in bulk billing in Medicare’s 40-year history.” According to Health Minister Mark Butler, Australians saved an estimated $15 million in GP gap fees in November and December, “helping to ease the cost-of-living pressures on household budgets.”
Well, Mr Butler, finding a GP that bulk bills in our neck of the woods, which also happens to be one of Australia’s major tourism hot spots, is a bit like my opening analogy of winning Lotto. And our local medicos have actually increased their fees since your bulk-billing largesse.
Might I be so bold as to suggest you could improve services by making the Medicare call centre actually answer calls. Or provide a call-back when they can. Or just include a contact email that actually works in each state and territory. How hard would that be?
John Mikkelsen is a former editor of three Queensland regional newspapers, columnist, freelance writer and author of the Amazon Books Memoir, Don’t Call Me Nev
While I’m going about online banking anomalies and service providers, let me relate the travails involved in attempting to renew my Optus mobile phone account online.
After linking with our bank account, I clicked submit and received a message back saying the payment couldn’t be processed because of “activity” on the account.
Again, what the ….? So I logged into the account and sure enough the sizeable payment had actually been deducted…
Call Optus, go through an identity check and finally get to speak to a foreign lady who has difficulty understanding me, and likewise, me her. But finally she grasps the concept that I’m claiming to have been charged for a service that hasn’t actually been renewed.
“Can you hold the line, I’ll have to talk to my supervisor..”
“No problem..”
Queue the elevator music that plays over and over and over for at least half an hour.
Finally, she returns and announces “Yes, I can confirm that we did receive the payment and we can refund it to your account but that might take a few days..”
I let out an audible sigh: “Well if you’ve received the payment can’t you just renew my mobile service, otherwise I’ll have to do all this again?”
“Ohhh, well, I’ll have to check with my supervisor again so I’ll put you back on hold, okay?”
“No problem!”
Finally, after another extended wait listening to the same mind-numbing tune, she comes back and informs me, “Yes, we can do that…”
Glory be! Then she asks if I can rate her service and switches me through to a survey. I give her a reasonable score for solving the problem and that was that.
But why does our modern switched-on life have to be so bloody complicated. Back when I was a boy not even space traveller Flash Gordon had a computer and the nearest thing to a smart phone belonged to comic book detective – extraordinaire, Dick Tracy (except his was more a futuristic smart watch on which he could make and receive calls.)
Do we really need to make life even more complicated with moves for a cashless society, digital currency and now a national digital ID which was rushed through the Senate just before Easter?
To all those who’ll say I should modern up and get with the 21st Century, I’ll close with a repetitive quote from a contemporary Destiny’s Child hit:
You’ll be sayin’, “No, no, no, no, no”
When it’s really, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes”
Let’s hope “No” prevails! (I expressed some similar views in another article, “No More cheques in the mail).
Loved your article, plus above comment, John — so reassuring to find I’m not alone. Also loved to hear that you actually rated the girl’s service and filled in the survey, something my wife and I have finally decided to stop doing. Everything one does these days seems to trigger a request to complete a survey: eat at a restaurant, go to the movies, buy anything online — even a book, for which they request a review before you can even read the thing. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to receive a survey asking about how satisfying we found our experience using a public toilet . . . although that can’t be traced yet, right? And can’t yet be monetised? Now, there’s an opportunity . . .
It’s even more re-assuring (and amusing) when it’s one of the tech-savvy young fry that struggle with our post- modern digital conveniences
SDI
Great article/s. And huge agreement re Medicare. My card went missing (to a previous address I think). It took weeks to track someone down, plus three trips to Centrelink before a new card arrived. I found the process hopelessly incompetent, no matter how ‘helpful’ the links or people seemed to be..
I would like to relay something I read a long time ago, and I know that surely it’s just satirical. It went like this: He completed his purchase of the new mobile phone and when he arrived home he unpacked the box etc, and logged into the providers website to do the necessary technical things. He came across the Terms and Conditions, noting that there were 37 pages of the drivel. Nonetheless it was raining and he wasn’t at work, so with a refreshing cup of coffee he commenced to read the T & C’s on his laptop. On finishing the read, he was shocked to find, nestling at the bottom of Page 37 in a ghosted-out, hard to read box, was the message, “Congratulations, you are the first person to ever read the T & C’s to the end, and as a result you have just won $30,000.”
There are many little strategies we can use to ease our journey through this broken society, and here I speak of paying your bills and the automated check-out.
About the bills: Cancel all auto-debit and bring them back into your control. Never pay your bill until you get a snail-mail letter commencing with the words, “Unless……”
When we become fully self-checkout and you push your laden trolley to the machine, leave it there, collect another trolley and park them side by side. Note: Do not use bags. As slowly as you can, process your goods onto the little shelf, thence through the scanner onto the opposite shelf for confirmation, Continue doing this until all the goods are properly and safely packed into the second trolley. Leave the first trolley at the machine. Either do not print the receipt, or perhaps print it and throw it directly into the rubbish. Doing this will prevent the armed sentry at the exit from demanding proof of purchase.
Doesn’t getting old feel good.
Yairs, when you have passed over three score and twenty as you listen on the ‘phone to some muzac or other mind blowing garbage whilst waiting for an operator or in fact just about anyone to answer, you wonder if the battery on yr desk ‘phone will last until someone answers or if in fact you will still be in the land of the living when they do answer, and secondly if English as she is spoke here is their first language.
Makes approaching the end of life seem not such a bad place to be…
April 11, 2024
The points made in this article are certainly valid. However, why use the socialised medical system? I realise that, if one is a taxpayer, he is paying for the service; the argument seems to be, “I might as well use it.” However, one’s taxes also pay for all the other subsidies in existence. Some people have even justified going on the dole because they had worked and paid taxes and now felt entitled to be supported by tax money. Whatever way one looks at it, the Medicare system is socialist. If we are going to oppose socialism, we should surely oppose this form of it, also.
If a dislike of the government’s having control of one’s healthcare (granted, it largely does, regardless; but that is largely due to the socialist system) is not incentive enough to pay one’s own way, an added reason is that, as I understand it, Medicare for some time now has provided rebates only be direct deposit. Reducing the use of cash or cheque is even more egregious when it involves direct government involvement in one’s bank account.
“Medicare for some time now has provided rebates only by direct deposit”.
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I seldom use Medicare and did not know that. My GP understood my reasons and offered to accept the bulk-billed amount instead of his usual full amount.
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For some reason (it was years ago, I forget why) Medicare claimed I owed them money, $30 odd from memory, so I fronted up at a Medicare office and proffered cash, which they refused to take, demanding a credit/debit card, which I refused to use. I wrote to the Health Minister enclosing a photo of an Australian banknote highlighting the words “This Australian banknote is legal tender throughout Australia” and received a letter from Medicare waiving the claimed debt. Looks like it’s no cash either way.
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Around 12 years ago, I lodged a FOI with the Child Support Agency, and they also refused to accept cash. The matter was very important, so I did not go the Minister route, but not important enough to give them my bank details, so I paid for a Bank Cheque which they accepted.
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Great article and so true. It’s a by-product of the new business model that gets the customer to do all the work so as to sack employees. If approached at a supermarket to use the self-serve I always ask how much are they going to pay me, which evokes a look of puzzlement on the face of the staff member. Sometimes I feel like ringing up a company to redesign their web-page in a logical and clear manner (think airlines, insurance) but the thought of sitting on the phone in a far queue listening to an apology for music usually deters me.
Medicare rebates are essentially a form of subsidy. As such, they conform to Due’s Law, which states that a subsidy increases the cost of the item in the marketplace by the amount of the subsidy. This follows from the fact that the person selling the service in the first place – before the subsidy is thought of – has already priced the item at the amount the consumer is willing to pay out of his own pocket. If government offers a subsidy of x dollars, then the asking price of the seller increases by x dollars. Naturally GPs will tell you they cannot offer the service without the subsidy. Really?
The other issue, of course, is that nothing given to the public by the government is actually a gift, since the money comes from the public in the first place. But not only that, a government-subsidised health service can only be supported by a vast and costly bureaucracy that would simply cease to exist in a free market.
Due’s Second Law states that any bureaucracy is inherently incompetent. The reasons for this are complex, but in essence they relate to the fact that employees in a bureaucratic structure must devote a high proportion of their energy to internal networking, and polishing their CVs. The result is groupthink and a disconnect from reality, which makes rational policy and planning impossible.
Case report: I recently received a letter from Centrelink telling me (a) that I must present my identity documents in person at a Centrelink office, and (b) that I could satisfy requirements by uploading them electronically. Since I had already uploaded them, it seemed logical to take them in person to Centrelink, where the clerk, shaking her head in disbelief, informed me that uploading them was in fact sufficient.
My GP ($70 consultation) gave me a referral to have an ultra-sound scan, I rang to make an appointment and was quoted $300, with the possibility of an Item 23 charge if the scan indicated a consultation.
When I reported to the receptionist she asked for my Medicare card and I said that as I’m not quite broke yet, I’ll pay my own way. After a bit of discussion of my objection to routine use of Medicare, how much better it was back in 1972 when around 90% of people had proper private insurance**, and an assurance I’d pay on the spot, she said they would only charge $170, more if a consultation followed.
The scan indicated a steroid injection, which a doctor gave and then wrote across my form “No charge Item 23”.
So I paid $170 cash instead of about $350 which would be the cost using Medicare. Don’t tell me that the clinic made a loss at $170, so it seems that the effect of Medicare is a massive increase in the cost of treatment, which we see wherever Socialism is allowed to take hold.
** I had private insurance for years, but did not read the fine print and when I did make a claim, Medibank Private said they were not allowed by law to pay unless I claimed from Medicare first! They were not allowed to even pay for the gap, could not pay me anything unless I put in a Medicare claim, the avoidance of which was the reason I’d taken out private insurance. I went home, read the fine print and cancelled the insurance.
Thanks for your Law Stephen, am I able to quote it in other forums? Your subsidy summary applies across the whole of government, first thing that came to mind was child care. If the amount paid to private operators was transferred back to something like the old Child Endowment scheme, would give many families the means to make up their own minds.
We cancelled our private health insurance over 30 years ago on the advice of a doctor. Put the same amount, monthly, into a deposit account and let compounding work its magic. We pay cash for our medical, dental, optical services, works out well. So have the holidays when the deposit reaches a pre-determined level.
With the fancy new Medicare bulk billing incentives arrived a complex document, essentially requiring that a signed contract be generated for every bulk billed service.
This required our receptionists to generate an online 3 page form, print it off, have the patient sign it, scan the signed document into the patient’s file, then proceed with the bulk billing.
We estimated this would require an extra 5-10 minutes work for every bulk billed service.
Hence we completely ceased the small amount of bulk billing we did from then on
Neither Mark Butler nor the MSM will tell you that!
Any way you look at it our health care system is much better than the system they have in the USA.
Cuba a country much poorer than the USA has better health statistics than the USA in most categories .
Wishing for a fully privatised health system opens the door for entrepreneurial medicine that puts health care costs very high and health outcomes down .
The recent Covid outcome and immunisation panic has lots of lessons about the power of large pharmaceuticals and their influence on government actions .
We see private entrepreneurial medicine driving the Cult of Gender Transition too .
There are fortunes to be made in that INDUSTRY .
Be careful what you wish for .
I had trouble doing a sim-swap. After Vodafone shut down the 3G network last year just before Christmas, my mobile was disconnected. New phone purchased of course could not fit my larger SIM. Phone-call to call centre sent me to the store to get a new nano-SIM. Store told me to go home and ring the call centre to get a new nano-SIM! A second phone-call to call centre – they said I probably went to the wrong store (rubbish) and they would send me a new nano-SIM in the mail free of charge. That is what I asked for in the first bloomin phone-call! Online re-activation goes belly up because I am required to use a smartphone to perform my ‘identity check’. Third phone-call to call centre tells me my number can’t be re-activated without smartphone identity check, and to go to the store to get it done. Second time to the store and they say we can’t do it and to go home and find a friend with a smart phone, despite me waving around my drivers licence in their face. Those staff stand at the desk with the highly stylised race and land declaration signs and their identity flags pinned to their chests, but they are utterly useless to help their customers needing the service they sell. They have no problems discriminating against people who, for whatever reason such as old age or mental illness, don’t use a smart phone. I eventually borrowed a neighbours phone and performed the ‘identity check’ on his mobile. I later emailed Vodafone to say despite mentioning my new mobile was just a basic call-and-text type at each and every dealing with Vodafone – you sill gave me the run-around and this was humiliating for me and robbed me of my independence.
Civic systems are breaking down all over Australia. The absolute blow-out with age pension applications is a disgrace. Fathers application made in January and still no pension received, not even a courtesy letter in the mail to say we have received your application. My father waited in the queue at a Centrelink office to simply hand over a schedule of super payment to be met with the front desk clerk saying ‘no, no we cannot accept this, you must have a meeting with an officer, it is a two-and-a half hour wait please’. Father was gobsmacked and said no need, his application was already in the pipeline and asked why the clerk couldn’t just take a copy and pass it to his fellow colleagues behind him. Fed up he left and returned several hours later to a new front desk clerk who immediately took the schedule copy and scanned it into her colleague! She profusely apologised to my father and promised his application approval was almost complete. So WHY the initial incompetence?
In comparison my fathers German pension application was a breeze! After receiving a lovely letter from Germany that he was now eligible for his pension (imagine that!) he filled in the online application. A few weeks later, a second letter was posted with a couple of documents to be filled in and mailed back with the correct envelope supplied! Two weeks later German pension in his bank account. Now that’s from a country in another hemisphere, with 90-odd million people. Imagine that efficiency! My father was treated with far more respect and efficiency from his native country than this country he laboured 42 years for.
Shame on Australian bureaucracy, it is well known in other parts of the world to be a joke. Australians.. we are not being treated with the respect we deserve.
More daily incompetence.
We had been at his plant group to renew his membership. He handed over his membership card and $25 cash to be met with ‘oh what is this membership card? oh your name doesn’t exist on our system, oh we don’t have your email, oh we don’t accept cash anymore, oh we are changing the way we interact with our members’. My father, fed-up, said forget about me then, I’ve come here ever year for 13 years, paid my membership and received my card, if you can’t handle that anymore then I’m not interested, good-bye. They have the gumption to put race/land/flag declarations on every door to the nursery, but can’t get my fathers address correct (put his address as somewhere in NSW!)
My father and I boarded a Peth bus with the entire electrical fuse box hanging down with wires dangling loose in reach of the children. He asks the driver if he realised this electrical box is hanging wide open, and to close it immediately. Lo and behold, not only were all bells completely dead when I tried to indicate our stop, but he sped past our stop (timed – therefore compulsory) anyway! Fed-up with this ridiculous scenario we walked home in the heat. Cursing what had become of our town all the way
All of this incompetence mentioned in the posts above was over two days. We say to each other every morning ‘ ARE WE GOING TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING TODAY?’. Breakdown of basic administration/service courtesy of the ‘change’ generation. Welcome to the new Australia.