Dr Webber had told a recent senate inquiry that he would like the PSR to have a greater role in investigating corporate medicine. (2)
“I can certainly see PSR — and this may be somewhat controversial — having an own-motion ability to investigate scams and unacceptable corporate behaviour, of which I have seen significant examples”, he told the inquiry.
In the MJA article Dr Webber described the Medicare Safety Net as “one of the most poorly thought out pieces of health legislation”, saying it offered opportunities for exploitation by unscrupulous doctors.
Dr Webber told MJA InSight he repeatedly raised many of these concerns with the Department of Health and Ageing when he was director of the PSR but nothing changed.
“It was frustrating. The department would tell you that changes to chronic disease management were underway but nothing ever seemed to happen”, he said.
Health journalist Ray Moynihan, in the same issue of the MJA, said health authorities had so far found no meaningful mechanism to police the corporate medicine sector. He said it was time to assess “how well the private-for-profit corporate structure sits with the spirit of a publicly funded universal health insurance scheme”. (4)
http://www.mjainsight.com.au/view?post=billions-wasted-says-ex-psr-chief&post_id=7687&cat=news-and-research
