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Interview AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, with Steve Liebmann, Channel Nine 'Today' -AMA talks with the Prime Minister's advisers overnight; new Health Minister Tony Abbott

E & OE - PROOF ONLY

LIEBMANN:     First, this morning to our top story and it's the rapidly worsening crisis that's hitting our hospitals.   More than 70 doctors across New South Wales alone say they'll resign rather than pay a hefty new levy to fund medical insurance payouts.

Australian Medical Association Federal President, Bill Glasson, joins us now from Brisbane airport.

Dr Glasson, good morning to you.  Can we start with reports that you met with the Prime Minister's personal health adviser last night and that you'll be meeting with incoming Health Minister, Tony Abbott later today?   Can you confirm that?

GLASSON:      Yes, Steve.  We had discussions last night with some of the Prime Minister's advisers and we're just about to jump on a plane to fly to Sydney to meet up with Tony Abbott in relation to this current crisis we're in.

LIEBMANN:     And what happened at last night's talks?

GLASSON:      Well, essentially we tried to reiterate the concerns that I suppose the avalanche of resignations across New South Wales, concerns that this was going to spread to Queensland and probably down to Victoria, and the impact that this was going to have on the services we could deliver to our public hospitals across New South Wales particularly, and the flow-on effects, I suppose, across the medical system as a whole, and their concerns this would lead to a shut down of a lot of our accident and emergency centres and also shut down of all elective surgery across New South Wales, particularly.

LIEBMANN:     Do you think the Federal Government now realises how serious this situation's become?

GLASSON:      I'm sure they do now, Steve.  I think in the last 48 hours and I think the future developments over today and over the weekend will obviously lead them to realise this is a critical situation that we're in and that we have to actually address this and get round the table and try and come up with some sort of solution.

LIEBMANN:     Okay.  So you're going to meet with the new Health Minister later today, but Senator Helen Coonan, the other Minister involved in all of this, she has now attacked doctors who are quitting the system.  She says it's a contrived and intemperate decision that is leaving patients stranded.   Are those the sort of comments that are going to help the situation?

GLASSON:      No, they're not.  They're unfortunate, they're very short-sighted comments.  Senator Coonan should realise the seriousness of the situation and the doctors are doing this out of, I suppose, desperation.  They do not want to leave their patients.  They do not want to leave their public hospitals, but in sheer frustration they've just said, 'enough is enough'.

With our discussions today with Tony Abbott hopefully we can actually come back to the doctors and say, listen, the Government is serious about this.  They're serious about sitting around the table and trying to come up with a solution in the interests of all our patients across this nation, and I keep saying it's impacting on patient services. 

We don't want to hurt patients and that's the message I suppose that the profession is trying to get out there to the committee at large.

LIEBMANN:     Dr Glasson, Senator Coonan is also saying this so-called incurred but not reported levy, was designed in consultation with the doctors and was calculated to be affordable.  Is that true?

GLASSON:      Yes, she mentioned the word 'affordable' there Steve.  The trouble is, this tax is not affordable in the sense that if the Government went about to stir up the profession they couldn't have done it more appropriately in the sense of sending out a 10 year levy notice where doctors receiving bills in the order of $200,000.  That's not sustainable and essentially what they've done is stirred up the medic electorate to a situation now where they've just said we're out of the system.

LIEBMANN:     And, just finally, to those who would say the real issue is simply doctors are greedy and they want to make more money, how do you respond to that?

GLASSON:      I'd like to say to those people out there this is about patients, about patients accessing medical services in this country and it's got little to do with doctors and more to do with patients and this is what we're trying to say to the Federal Government. 

Let's maintain our medical workforce.  Let's make sure that our patients out there can access and continue to access the highest quality medical service in the world, and it really just takes a little bit of control of the situation for us to sit down and actually try and design a way forward to keep our patients, as I say, at the centre of the stage.

LIEBMANN:     Alright.  Well, you've got to catch a plane, and you've got a meeting with Tony Abbott, so we don't want to hold you up.

Thanks for your time.

GLASSON:      Thanks, Steve.  Thank you very much indeed.

LIEBMANN:     Dr Bill Glasson, head of the Australian Medical Association.

Now we're going to stay on this story, but in a sense we need your help.   If you or your family have been directly affected by the health crisis we want to know about it.

Ends

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