budget 2014, page-9

On one take, this is shocking news for CAJ.

At present, imaging services that are bulk billed attract medicare payment to the provider of 95% of the Schedule fee. This is under what's known as the Bulk Billing Incentive:

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/budget/publishing.nsf/Content/budget2009-hmedia14.htm

The Bulk Billing Incentive is axed by the budget.

My understanding is that CAJ pretty much exclusively bulk bills.

Therefore instead of receiving 0.95*MBS today, I think that for everyone other than concession card holders they will receive:

0.85*MBS - 5 + co-payment

now. . . . in order to know how big the co-payment needs to be to be revenue neutral on a per-procedure basis, you need to know how much the MBS rate is for each procedure. I haven't looked that up. . . . .but I imagine it adds up to a Pretty Big co-payment being required on an MRI. This could be very ugly.