An eye surgeon providing services to Bourke for more than a decade says the planned cut to federal funding for cataract surgery flies in the face of a new report into Indigenous eye health.
The Outback Eye Service will hold its last surgery in Bourke at the end of next month because the Government is set to halve the Medicare rebate for cataract operations from November.
A national report released this week found the rate of blindness in Indigenous adults is more than six times higher than the general community and the major cause is blinding cataracts.
Dr Ashish Agar from the Prince of Wales Outback Eye Team says the funding cut will have a devastating impact.
“The standard cataract patient who’s on the waiting list - and we’ve got a whole bunch of them now - we’re really concerned they’re going to be forced to travel to a regional centre or forced to travel to Sydney,” he said.
“I know some of my Indigenous patients and elderly patients - this is going to be an enormous dislocation and some of them simply won’t go.”
Dr Agar is urging his patients to lobby the Government to reconsider the changes.
He says eye doctors have taken a 78 per cent pay cut over the past 20 years.
“Every one of us that comes out here isn’t in it for the money,” he said.
“The Government peddles this line that we’re just greedy doctors, well I can tell you travelling seven hours to see a few patients and earning about a third or a quarter of what you would in the city, it’s not really the sort of stuff you do if you’re in it for a buck.”
The Nationals’ Member for Calare, John Cobb, says next month the Coalition will attempt to block the legislation in the Senate.
“Our intention is to disallow it along with the independents and I don’t believe we could in any moral or other judgment do otherwise,” he said.
“I think this is more about a commitment to wipe out public health than it is about looking after people.”