Questions are now being asked about whether Sam Rae is the right person to be fronting the government’s aged care reforms.
Inexperienced federal aged care minister Sam Rae floundered today when faced with tough questions about the government’s backflip on co-payments for basic Support at Home program services.
Mr Rae announced yesterday that the government would return support for showering, dressing and continence care to the “clinical care” category of services, meaning participants in the Support at Home program will no longer have to pay a co-payment.
But the change will not come in until October, leaving many older Australians forced to forgo such basic day-to-day needs for other care.
When asked to today why the co-payment for those services had been introduced in the first place, Mr Rae had no reasonable answer other than to throw some anonymous “experts” under the bus.
Sky News’ Peter Stefanovic tried first, asking why people were paying for showers in the first place.
“We’ve got a $40 billion aged care system and that system has to be sustainable for Australian taxpayers and so there are always difficult trade-off decisions to be made,” said Mr Rae.
“In terms of the classing of care, we took the advice of experts and decided what was clinical care versus not clinical care.
“Importantly, older people have told us that they need showering, dressing and this continence care considered as clinical care. And so, from October, that’s what we’ll be doing.”
When asked what patients would be doing until October, Mr Rae said:
“Well, of course if we can implement this sooner, we will. But we need to make careful, considered decisions that are in the interests of older people. And that includes the implementation process.
“We’ve gone through a careful policy design process here, and we’ll go through the implementation in the same manner.”
The ABC’s Sally Sara also had Mr Rae scrambling this morning, when he suggested that he and the government were listening to older people.
Also in today’s edition:
- Shock, sadness and ‘mass anxiety’ in wake of Butler’s NDIS ‘betrayal’
- Reset welcomed, but can government deliver aged care reforms?
- From April Fools to real reform: what Australian health services are actually building
- The independent review that prompted Butler’s $3b aged care bed boost
- Which NDIS claims are genuinely fraud, anyway?
- More clinical trials coming to regional Victoria
- ADHD cost-of-living relief welcome, but some aren’t feeling it yet
- Avive to open second Melbourne mental health hospital
“There were very loud and well informed and persistent voices before this change was made. Why wasn’t the government listening adequately then?” she asked.
Mr Rae: “Well, there have been different views on either side of this, and of course the government took the advice of experts through the design process. We’ve got a …”
Ms Sara: “Did the experts get it wrong?”
Mr Rae: “We’ve made clear that we’ll continue to listen, particularly to older people and their carers. And in this case, we’re making the change that older people have made clear they want.”
Ms Sara: “You’ve said that showering, dressing and continence aren’t optional extras but are the basics of ageing with dignity. What was your view in November?”
Mr Rae: “Well, as I said, we took the advice of the experts in the designing of the system. But I always said we needed to listen to older people, and we needed to respond to their experiences. And that’s what this is about, responding to people’s experience of the system. They’ve made clear that the current settings aren’t right, and so we’re moving that showering, the dressing, the continence care into the clinical care part of the system.”
Ms Sara then asked if those patients who had been paying for showering and other basic needs should be reimbursed for the money they have been spending since November and will be spending until October.
Mr Rae dodged the question once before finally saying:
“So, there’s not a proposal around reimbursement. This is about making sure that the settings are right moving forward.”
Ms Sara: “Why aren’t they being reimbursed if the government got it wrong?”
Mr Rae: “I’m not really going to get into the discussion around the commentary of this, of the rights and the wrongs.”
Ms Sara: “But this isn’t commentary; this is the people who have paid for things like showering and continence care. The government’s now realised or recognised that that wasn’t right, that shouldn’t have happened. So they’re going to be left out of pocket, will they?
Mr Rae dodged that twice more before saying:
“Well, up until now, [those services] have not been considered clinical care. The change that we’re making is that they will now be considered, from October, clinical care. And from that point there won’t be co-contributions associated with it. The government will fund the full cost of those cares.”
Related
Mr Rae denied he was throwing experts “under the bus”.
“There’s no point in throwing anyone under the bus here, and certainly not the experts. There have been a group of people across the sector, the advocates in terms of consumer advocates, the workers and the workforce representatives, people who’ve been working extremely hard all the way through this generational reform process.
“We need to just take a step back … This is a once in a generation reform. There will be further refinements that will need to happen ongoing. This is the priority now, which is why we’re responding.”
Mr Rae also revealed that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was part of the decision to backflip on the policy, saying he had been “a key driver of identifying this challenge”.
The question needs to be asked whether Mr Rae is the right person to be leading the government’s delivery of aged care reform.