On one take, this is shocking news for CAJ.At present, imaging...

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.