Commonwealth Numbered Regulations - Explanatory Statements

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HEALTH INSURANCE AMENDMENT REGULATIONS 1998 (NO. 9) 1998 NO. 371

Statutory Rules 1988 No. 371

Issued by Authority of the Minister for Health and Aged Care

Health Insurance Act 1973

Health Insurance Amendment Regulations 1998 (No. 9)

Section 133 of the Health Insurance Act 1973 (the Act) provides that the Governor-General may make Regulations for the purposes of the Act.

Regulation 13 of the Health Insurance Regulations 1975 (the Regulations) was previously amended from 1 November 1996 to give effect to arrangements for the purposes of measuring cost shifting from public hospitals to the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Under the arrangements, hospital related services, including pre-admission, post-discharge and outpatient type services, were able to be billed to the Medicare Benefits Schedule provided that they were identified with an 'A'.

Regulation 13 of the Regulations has been amended to omit subregulations (20), (21) and (22).

The amendment revokes the previous arrangements whereby hospital related services, including preadmission.

post-discharge and outpatient type services, were able to be billed to the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

The arrangements did not operate as intended. In particular, the data was insufficient to form the basis of redistributing the 1997-98 cost shifting penalty under the 1993-98 Medicare Agreements, as was originally intended. The data is not required under the 1998-2003 Australian Health Care Agreements.

The continuation of the arrangements would have compromised the Commonwealth's position in administering the Australian Health Care Agreements in that, while the arrangements existed, reported instances of cost shifting which fell within the arrangements could not be investigated.

The Regulations commenced on gazettal.