Discussion Board: General Issues

This thread is related to managing the costs of medications and GP visits within a tight budget. A couple of years ago I had to give up my part-time work outside of the home when I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. At that stage my youngestest was 4 1/2yrs and our eldest was 7 yrs. Due to my husband earning just above the 'Community Service' cut of rate none of my health care cost were subsidised. Compounding to this were the needs of my daughters Encopresis condition which is not considered to be a disability in the eyes of the hospital pediatritions even though she has 3 - 4 changes a day (on a good day), plus medications. Her condition has now been recognised as a disability by our GP so we have just begun to recieve a disability allowance ($38.00 pw) for her which helps towards the costs of managing her on-going condition. But back to my original subject matter, there are many other families out there in the same situation as we find ourselves. What I have noticed is that their seems to be either a lack of awareness or understanding about the financial burden that forces us into situations of choosing what medications to take or collect etc... Ultimately there are only a few options of where money can be sacraficed - not going to doctor or picking up perscriptions, food, heating, childrens sports or out of school activites. I'm not sure whether anyone has any solutions, personally I would like to see a change to the 'Higher User Card' criteria. Currently you must visit your GP 12 times in a year before being eligable. This doesn't work for those like myself as I would only use my GP up to ten times in a year, as every third week my needs were cared for by my oncologist. Making two extra visits to entitle me to a High Users card would have cost a further $90.00 plus prescription charges. On the home front though things are okay and presently medication costs are now in the managable zone. My thoughts and best wishes go out to other families who are challenged by the extra costs of living.

i understand where you are coming from and even high users card holders still pay high doctors fees but meds are a lot cheapers with a card, anyway i use A and E alot when my daughter is ill, this saves alot on doctors fees and even if we have to wait to been seen, which can be a pain i just think of the money im saving, i know alot of others would think this is cheeky but im a one parnet family and money dont go far and this is just one way to save costs and still do the best for a sick child, and we pay taxes so we can have hospitals etc

Hi. I get a high users card fairly quickly. Not the doctors one, but the one for at the chemist. After I get 12 items on prescription they are all free for the rest of the year. Its not hard for me to get 12 items, but as we dont have a comminuty services card its alot of money at $15 per item. I dont know where they expect us to get the money from. But we get by. There are places that can help, and if your GP will sign off on any medication for you, for any reason whatsoever, WINZ will pay you a subsidy for it.

Its a catch 22 isnt it? We cant afford to visit the Dr as often as we probably should, and thus dont qualify for a high user card....but if we had one we could afford it.

We are also just above the cut-off for CSC, but spending a lot of money on health care...a lot more than most people who ARE eligible.

I dont have any answers. But I do think there need to be a bit more personalisation of the system, some way that one can apply for an 'exemption' or 'inclusion' based on individual circumstances.

My children are on the Child Disability Allowance - it does help but it doesn't cover everything which is hard.
We used to have a High Service Card but it didn't make any difference but my GP's practice has now changed to the careplus system which is even better - get a free dr visit every 6 months - the 3 month and 9 month visits are 50% of the dr fees - hope that makes sense.
Found out on Friday that from Monday onwards dr fees for adults reduce from $63 down to $35.50 which helps heaps - funny thing is my daughter being over 6 y costs $35!! Under 6 y is $15.
We get CSC for the children because of the child disability allowance but hubby and I haven't got one cos hubby's income is too high. I have found the CSC great esp for swimming lessons - 10% off per child etc.

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