The Federal Government has laid out a $132 billion health agenda for the coming year – if it regains power at the next election – and while there were no major wins for eye health, changes to the PBS safety net and small business incentives are expected to trickle down to the ophthalmic sector.
On Tuesday 29 March, Treasurer Mr Josh Frydenberg delivered the Federal Budget 2022-2023 that had a particular focus on easing cost of living pressures and infrastructure projects in regional Australia.
Outgoing Federal Health Minister Mr Greg Hunt announced $132 billion in 2022–23 for his portfolio, increasing to $140 billion in 2025–26, with a total commitment of $537 billion over the next four years.
While there was nothing “revolutionary” for eye health and optometry, Optometry Australia (OA) said of interest within the health portfolio is additional investment across primary healthcare, rural healthcare, mental healthcare, the ongoing COVID-19 response, and the Medicare Research Future Fund.
Measures expected to positively impact optometry included:
- Free Interpreting Services for allied health, with $1.95m spent over four years allowing allied health professionals access to the Australian Government’s Free Interpreting Services for patient care. OA is pursuing more details to share with members.
- Auslan services in primary health, with $600,000 allocated to a scoping study to identify the need and opportunity to provide Auslan and spoken language services for patients who are deaf.
- A relatively small investment of $500,000 in allied health digital readiness, to work with the allied health sector to identify barriers to greater adoption of digital health tools. OA has been working with the Digital Health Agency for some time on identifying and addressing these barriers as they relate to optometry, and said it would continue to advocate for support to ensure optometry practice management software is integrated with initiatives such as My Health Record.
- Increased investment in scholarships for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to undertake health care studies, including in allied health and optometry.
Additionally, Hunt announced $45.5 billion over four years to access more affordable medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), and more than $2.4 billion this budget to add new medicines to the PBS.
In keeping with its cost of living agenda, the government is investing $525.3 million to lower the PBS safety net thresholds from 1 July 2022 by the equivalent of 12 fully priced scripts for concession card holders and the equivalent of approximately two fully priced scripts for non-concessional patients. This is expected to benefit over 2.4 million people.
For concessional patients, the safety net threshold will be lowered by 25% from $326.40 to $244.80 – an $81.60 reduction for concessional patients. This means when a concession card holder reaches the safety net threshold, after 36 full priced concessional scripts, they will receive PBS medicines at no charge for the rest of the year.
For general patients, the general safety net threshold will reduce from $1,542.10 to $1,457.10 – an $85 reduction for non-concessional patients, which means that after the equivalent of about 34 full priced general co-payments, general patients pay only the concessional co-payment of $6.80 per PBS script for the balance of the year.
Small business incentives
For small business, including small business optometry practices, the government announced those with annual turnover of less than $50m can access:
- A 20% deduction for the cost of external training courses delivered to their employees from budget night to 30 June 2024; and
- A 20% deduction for the cost of expenses and depreciating assets that support digital uptake, up to $100,000 of expenditure per year, until 20 June 2023.
“Notably for small and medium businesses, the temporary full expensing measure has not been extended beyond 30 June 2023,” OA stated.
“This election period remains a critical time for us to continue our advocacy efforts and reinforce our conversations about eye health in Australia. We continue to seek your voice to help us to do this as we are stronger together.”
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