Please don't turn the public against the very people standing between them and a system in crisis.
I became a doctor to look after patients. Not to fight with a system, a minister or political motives. But here we are in 2026.
When my patient sits across from me or in the hospital – frightened about a result, a symptom, a diagnosis they don’t yet understand – I don’t see a fee. I see a person who needs my time, my attention, my judgement, and the team around me who make safe care possible. That’s what is at stake right now.
This country is already fractured in too many ways. Ethnicity. Origin. Politics. Faith. The last thing we need is another line drawn for political gain – this time between patients and the people trying to heal them.
Doctors are not the enemy. We are service people. We spent a decade or more studying. We work through nights, weekends and public holidays while our families wait at home. We miss our kids growing up. We sit beside other people’s families in the hospital while our own go without us.
We carry the weight of decisions that don’t end when the consultation does – with no time or space to debrief. The rate of burnout, depression and suicide in our profession is among the highest of any in this country – and still, we walk into the room, smile, and do everything we can to give our patients the best possible outcome.
We absorb rising costs year after year so our patients don’t feel them. We drive to country towns because the public system can’t see those patients in time. We stay back to return a worried call while missing the school pick-up.
Also in today’s edition:
- We are deeply sorry: Cohealth
- Aged care profits rebound, but don’t be fooled
- Hospitals apologising essential under new national open disclosure framework
- Governments must define role of Kids Hubs alongside Thriving Kids: report
- Renewed push for type 2 diabetes patients to access subsidised monitoring
- Bad workflow plus AI still equals bad workflow, hospital access report warns
The truth nobody wants to say out loud is this: the Medicare rebate hasn’t kept up with the cost of caring for people for over decades.
Public hospitals are full. General practice has been stripped to the bone. The patients who fall through those gaps end up in our rooms – anxious, apologetic, sometimes angry, almost always wondering why a system they pay taxes for has left them paying again.
Capping what doctors can charge doesn’t fix any of that. It hides the problem for a little longer. The nurse gets cut. The consultation gets shorter. The equipment gets older. The country clinic stops opening. The patient – the person this was supposedly all for – gets less.
Please don’t turn the public against the very people standing between them and a system in crisis. Don’t manufacture another division in a country that already has too many. Doctors are not your problem. We are part of the answer – if you let us be.
Put the patient at the centre of this conversation. Really at the centre. Not as a talking point. Not as a number in a press release. As a person who needs care, and the people trying to deliver it.
That’s all any of us are asking for.
Associate Professor Viraj Kariyawasam is a consultant gastroenterologist, and AMA NSW councillor.
This article was first published on Dr Kariyawasam’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original article here.
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