From mental health to threatened species: the glaring omissions in the 2025 federal budget
While much of the federal budget conversation will centre around what's in it for you – and for good reason – what's not in the budget is equally as important.
And, given it's a small, pre-election budget, there are quite a few omissions.
Here's who is missing out on a piece of the pie this time around.
While the surprise of tax cuts sweetened the budget news for many, those on income support payments were overlooked.
In particular were those on jobseeker payments, which remain on levels below the poverty line.
The government's own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee released its 2025 report earlier in March recommending the jobseeker rate be increased to 90% of the aged pension. But despite a number of advocacy groups pushing for a boost to the payments, it was nowhere to be seen in Tuesday's release.
Another area hurting the bottom lines of many Australians is housing – whether they're renting or buying.
Unlike last year's budget, this one did not raise the commonwealth rent assistance rates, which helped shave off around 1.3% in rental increases across the country.
Peak health bodies pointed to the lack of initiatives in the budget to support mental health.
Dr Elizabeth Moore, the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said there had been no meaningful investment in growing the psychiatry workforce and matching mental health funding to the level of community need.
The executive director of the Australian Association of Psychologists, Tegan Carrison, said the government's claim the budget contains the largest investment in Medicare since its creation 'continues to ignore one of the key aspects of health – mental health'.
The peak medical body, the Australian Medical Association, highlighted the lack of investment in preventative health, adding it was particularly disappointed in the lack of a sugar sweetened beverage tax, despite the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into diabetes.
The Public Health Association of Australia said the budget maintains the 'decades-long tradition of spending on treatments and hospitals, rather than investing in preventive health measures that stop people getting sick in the first place'.
In the face of commonwealth spending on public hospitals increasing by 12% in one year, CEO and adjunct professor Terry Slevin said, 'The only rational response is to reduce demand by investing in making people healthier, through real commitments in prevention.'
Despite being widely canned by the university sector, students, Labor and the Greens since its implementation, the jobs-ready graduates (JRG) scheme will have to wait until the next term of government for any reform.
The scheme, introduced by the Morrison government in 2021, increased fees for some courses, including humanities, to fund fee cuts in other courses as well as 39,000 extra university places.
Universities Australia estimates JRG has reduced university funding by about $800m a year and driven arts degrees to $50,000. Its CEO, Luke Sheehy, said the budget was a 'missed opportunity' to address the student funding system.
'JRG has unfairly altered fees for students and reduced funding to universities,' he said. 'We want to work with the next federal government as a priority to set new funding rates and it's imperative that the next federal budget funds this work properly and fully.'
Innovative Research Universities executive director, Paul Harris, said JRG remained the 'elephant in the room' that needed to be addressed. 'The primary driver of student debt is the cost of doing a degree and these costs are still rising for Australian students,' he said.
The arts sector is often overlooked in federal budgets and Labor's 2025 budget did not reverse that trend.
There was one major announcement – $8.6m to extend the Revive Live program, which supports the continuation of Australia's live music venues and festivals. The National Association for the Visual Arts was supportive of the package but said future budgets should provide 'comprehensive, equitable support for all art forms'.
The Save Our Arts campaign suggested the government could look at increasing local content quotas for multinational streaming services with Australian subscribers as well as new laws to protect Australian creatives from AI.
The Australian Conservation Foundation calculated that less than one cent out of every dollar allocated went to protecting nature.
Foundation chief executive, Kelly O'Shanassy, said there was no new funding for threatened species beyond a $3m commitment from existing resources for a captive breeding program for the endangered Maugean skate. 'With rampant habitat destruction and the accelerating impacts of climate change, numerous ecosystems are on the brink and people's livelihoods are at risk, yet investment in nature protection and climate action remains a tiny fraction of commonwealth spending,' O'Shanassy said.
The budget included $250m over five years for a 'saving Australia's bushland' program, promised to help meet a target of protecting 30% of land by 2030. The Biodiversity Council said it was estimated 20 times that amount would be needed to meet the 30% goal. It said estimates suggested $2.3bn a year would be needed to protect the country's more than 2,000 threatened species from extinction.
The federal government provided $14m in funding for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which is responsible for privacy and freedom of information in the government, in Tuesday's budget, but the portfolio documents for the agency reveal that while there will be a slight boost in base funding in this current financial year at $40m, that is reduced in the next few years, down to $26m in 2028-29.
The commissioner, Elizabeth Tydd, revealed in Senate estimates in February the organisation had already shed 23% of its workforce, going from 200 staff to 138.
The current headcount is 179, according to the document, and will go down to 176 in the next financial year.
This comes despite increased responsibility for the agency, including overseeing the government's digital ID – for which the agency received $5.3m in funding for – but also the extra roles of investigating the growing number of privacy breaches affecting Australians, and dealing with the workload of reviewing freedom of information decisions.
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NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
Facing sky-high medical bills? Your hospital may have overcharged you
After Blake Pfeifer, a veteran plumber in Colorado Springs, Colorado, underwent emergency stomach surgery at a nearby nonprofit hospital in 2022, he struggled to understand the bills flooding in for his weeklong stay. The initial charge for the procedure at the University of Colorado Health Memorial Hospital Central was $104,000, his records show. Because Pfeifer had no insurance and would be paying out of pocket, he was quoted a discounted price of $58,124. He said he called the hospital to get clarity on the bills but got nowhere. He began paying some of them and was pursued by a collection agency on others. Then he sought the help of a patient advocacy group. 'I've always paid my bills,' Pfeifer, 63, said. 'I wanted a little better explanation.' The group he worked with, Patient Rights found that some of his charges were far higher than the amounts UCHealth reported under a federal price transparency rule that went into effect in 2021. And that wasn't the only notable finding: Only 25% of Pfeifer's charges showed up on the hospital's required price list and therefore could not be compared at all. Pfeifer's experience is not uncommon, according to patient advocates, public interest lawyers and Medicare data. The burden of medical debt, a problem faced by 100 million Americans, has pushed many to delay medical care and even file for bankruptcy, research shows. Making these obligations even more ruinous, patient advocates say, is that many may be based on inaccurate health care bills. These discrepancies occur even as hospitals must list prices for care on their websites. The price transparency rule, initiated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, requires facilities to 'establish, update, and make public a list of all standard charges for all items and services.' Implemented under the first Trump administration, it aims to help consumers shop for care and compare prices before they go to the hospital. Now, four years after the rule went into effect, hospital billing seems 'intentionally complex,' said Cynthia Fisher, founder of Patient Rights 'Hospitals and insurance companies alike have even hired many middle-player firms to be able to maximize their margins and profits at every single patient encounter,' she added. 'Sometimes what we're finding is the charges like Blake's that are billed are far beyond even the highest rate that they have within their hospital pricing file.' It adds up to an increasingly costly health care experience for Americans. A West Health-Gallup survey published April 2 found that 35% of respondents said they could not access high-quality, affordable health care — a new high since 2021. $99 for an $8 blood test UCHealth is a nonprofit hospital system with 14 hospitals in Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska. In its financial filings, UCHealth says its discount program for self-pay patients like Pfeifer 'reduces uninsured patients' liabilities to a level more equivalent of insured patients.' Some of Pfeifer's records conflict with this description. Pfeifer received 10 common blood tests, known as a metabolic panel, and was billed $104 for each. By comparison, UCHealth's public price data shows it charged insured patients between $6.52 and $52.89 for each test in 2022. In another case, Pfeifer was charged $99 for a blood culture to measure bacteria, the records show, while UCHealth's pricing data listed a range of charges for insured patients of between $8 and $61. For a phosphate level blood test, Pfeifer was billed $30, while insured patients at UCHealth were charged between $3.72 and $22.02. Under Colorado law, violations of hospital price transparency requirements are a deceptive trade practice. Dan Weaver, a UCHealth spokesman, said in a statement that the health system 'does everything possible to share prices and estimates with our patients, encourage insurance coverage, assist patients in applying for Medicaid and other programs that may offer coverage.' Regarding Pfeifer's case, Weaver said he could not comment because the hospital had received notice from a lawyer representing Pfeifer that he may file a claim against it. He said the hospital disputes what is in the lawyer's notice, but he declined to specify what exactly it disputes. Weaver pointed to the state of Colorado 's 2024 report stating that UCHealth hospitals 'are fully compliant with transparency requirements.' For 2022, when Pfeifer received care at UCHealth, the document showed the hospital providing his care received a 'fair' transparency rating by the state, above 'poor' but below 'good.' Weaver added that CMS, which determines hospital compliance with transparency requirements, 'has not cited UCHealth or our hospitals for noncompliance.' Enforcement actions are exceedingly rare. CMS' website lists monetary penalties against only 27 hospitals in the four years since the requirements began. (There are 6,000 hospitals nationwide, according to the American Hospital Association.) A December 2024 report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General found that nearly 40% of the 100 hospitals it studied were not complying with the price transparency requirements. Colorado law allows patients to sue a hospital bringing a debt collection proceeding against them when they believe the facilities have violated price transparency requirements. Steve Woodrow, a Democratic member of the Colorado House of Representatives and a lawyer at the firm Edelson in Denver, represents Pfeifer. 'What happened to Mr. Pfeifer unfortunately repeats itself and plays out across the country thousands of times every year,' Woodrow told NBC News in an interview. 'We now have a situation where people are afraid to get medical care because of the financial ramifications.' 'A power imbalance' Last November, the Justice Department alleged that UCHealth had overbilled Medicare and TRICARE, the health insurer for U.S. service members and their families. Between November 2017 and March 31, 2021, the government alleged, providers at UCHealth hospitals submitted inflated Medicare and TRICARE claims for 'frequent monitoring of vital signs' among patients in the emergency department. UCHealth agreed to pay $23 million to settle the allegations without an admission of liability. Weaver, the UCHealth spokesperson, said the hospital system settled to prevent a lengthy and costly legal dispute. 'UCHealth firmly denies these allegations,' he added, 'and maintains that its billing practices align with the guidelines set forth by the American College of Emergency Physicians.' While UCHealth is a nonprofit, it has generated rising revenues and earnings recently. Net patient revenues at UCHealth, its securities filings show, totaled $8 billion in fiscal 2024, 17% higher than the previous year. Operating income was $523 million, an increase of 58% over 2023. UCHealth's charges for care are higher than most other nonprofits', Medicare data shows. In fiscal 2022, the most recent figures available, UCHealth charged patients 6.6 times the hospital system's costs for care. That is far higher than the 4 times, on average, that U.S. nonprofit health systems charged for care that year, according to Ge Bai, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Weaver, of UCHealth, said the hospital system's charges are competitive with others. 'Last year alone, UCHealth provided $1.3 billion in total community benefits including about $570 million in uncompensated care,' his statement said. It's problem enough for patients who are overcharged or billed incorrectly for health care. But when hospitals sue to receive payment for those bills, such lawsuits often result in default judgments, legal experts say, issued to patients who don't appear in court or respond. Default judgments can have dire consequences, including wage garnishments. UCHealth has sued thousands of patients using third parties or debt collection middlemen in recent years, a practice that is examined in new research by academics at the George Washington University Law School, Stanford University's Center for Clinical Research and Fisher's group. The study, ' Hospitals Suing Patients: The Rise of Stealth Intermediaries,' found UCHealth and one debt collection firm brought 12,722 lawsuits against patients from 2019 to 2023. Legal records analyzed by the authors suggested 'many of the collection efforts were based on unsubstantiated and inaccurate billing records.' The use of legal middlemen is a national trend and allows hospitals to hide their involvement, avoiding the bad publicity these lawsuits can bring, the research contends. Last year, Colorado lawmakers enacted legislation barring hospitals from suing patients under debt collectors' names, after an investigation into the practice by 9News, an NBC affiliate, and The Colorado Sun. Barak Richman is the Alexander Hamilton professor of business law at George Washington Law School and a co-author of the study. 'What this research shows is people are being pulled into court where a power imbalance takes advantage of them,' he said. 'There needs to be a lot of deliberative thought into what to do about courts as it relates to medical debt.' In a statement about the study, UCHealth's Weaver said those suits make up a 'tiny fraction of our patient care — in fact, more than 99.93% of all patient accounts are resolved without a lawsuit.' He added: 'This study, based on older data, does not reflect the changes put in place in recent years to minimize billing errors, ensure patients are aware of our financial assistance options, and are well informed of their medical bills.' 'A principle thing' Damon Carson, a small-business owner in Longmont, Colorado, was sued by a collection company after he received an outpatient endoscopy at a UCHealth hospital in his town. The suit came while he was disputing the hospital's charges as excessive. A self-pay patient along with his wife, Traci, Carson tried to be a savvy shopper before he went in for the procedure in 2021. He asked for price estimates from several providers, and the nearby UCHealth facility provided one totaling $1,448, according to a court document. Carson paid upfront. 'I had the procedure and everything was fine,' Carson told NBC News. 'Then the bills started rolling in.' Additional charges of $4,742 drove the total cost for the procedure to around $6,200, a court document shows. Carson said that when he questioned the bills, noting the far lower original estimate, the hospital told him the add-on costs reflected the removal of growths found inside him during surgery. A UCHealth spokesman said the original estimate for Carson's care was accurate and that he was told there might be additional charges and signed an acknowledgement of that, which the hospital provided to NBC News. (Carson says he recalls no discussion of the potential for additional charges.) When Carson refused to pay, he was sued by Collection Center Inc., a debt collection firm that has often filed lawsuits against patients on behalf of the hospital, the academic study shows. In 2023, Carson and the collection firm conducted a mediation, according to court documents. Carson wound up paying only one-third of the additional charges to settle the case. 'I was surprised they caved that fast,' Carson told NBC News. 'Traci and I could easily have paid the $4,000 and our lives gone on. But this was a principle thing.' Fisher, the patient advocate, said the outcome of Carson's case is revealing. 'No one should ever pay that first bill,' she said. 'The onus of proof needs to be on the hospital and the insurance company to prove that they have not overcharged us.'
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Daily Mail
Embattled GP reveals the biggest losers of Albo's Medicare overhaul
Labor's plans to reform chronic health funding will cripple community medical practices and put Australia's most vulnerable at risk, a leading doctor has warned. From July 1, the federal government will overhaul its approach to funding treatment for patients with chronic diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes as part of its reforms to Medicare The government hopes the changes would 'simplify, streamline and modernise' the treatment of long-term diseases for both patients and doctors. But health experts warn they will remove the incentives in place for publicly-funded GPs to deliver quality care to their patients. Dr Kenneth McCroary, who chairs a prominent advocacy group for GPs in south-west Sydney, said the changes will halve the payments his doctors receive from the government for chronic disease treatment. 'We had these things called chronic health plans and chronic management plans and team-based care plans and mental health plans, which gave us a little bit more funding to spend more time with the patients and help look after them better,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'And so on July 1, what they're going to do is going to cut the funding for those plans... so it means that instead of being funded to spend some actual quality time working with our patients... we're going to take a 50 per cent cut in the payments for that quality care.' While he insisted the gutting of primary health was a bipartisan failure and not the fault of a single side of politics, he said former Labor champions of universal health care like Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam would be 'rolling in their graves' over the way their party is managing Medicare. The changes will reduce the list of chronic health services through practices can bulk-bill through Medicare and substitute a shortened list of eligible services, including the preparation and review of chronic condition management plans. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Michael Wright also recognised the risks of the changes when they were first flagged last year. 'We know these chronic condition item numbers are crucial to support the financial viability of many practices, and they are the most commonly bulk billed items,' he told NewsGP. 'We were worried that these changes would reduce funding for these important services. When we surveyed our members last year 69 per cent said they would have to start charging a fee rather than bulk bill patients.' Dr McCroary estimated doctors at his practice would be lose out on funding to the equivalent of $40,000 to $45,000 per year. He believes the changes will benefit only those clinics that make a business out of quick, superficial chronic disease treatments. 'How the hell am I going to keep my doors open now, unless I turn into one of the bulk-billing medical centers that sees ten people an hour in-and-out my door every six minutes?' he asked. 'It's not the kind of medicine I want to practice; it's not the kind of medicine my colleagues want to practice; it's not the kind of medicine that community needs to keep them well and healthy and alive and out of hospital; but it's what the government continues to incentivize as it continues to bludgeon away at the core of primary care.' According to Victoria University, more than half of the Australian population lives with a chronic condition, a problem felt most acutely in less economically advantaged communities. Dr McCroary observes the effects of chronic diseases on a daily basis as practice principal at Macarthur General Practice in Campbelltown. 'Just yesterday, a couple came in, he's got heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis. She's got epilepsy and osteoporosis and diabetes and asthma and that's just off the top of my head,' he said. 'And they'll tell me: 'Please bulk bill us, otherwise, you know we can't afford to come here. We're only alive because of the care we get from you guys.'' 'They're our normal patient, they're the normal kind of people we see every day and now we're supposed to be looking after them at half the Medicare income. When asked how he plans to keep his Campbelltown practice open, Dr McCroary expected to work two full time jobs: one with his patients and another advocating for change. 'We're just going to keep trying. But, yeah, it gets hard,' he said.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Daily Mail
Why Aussie shoppers can't get enough of 'flattering' $40 item with over 1,000 five-star reviews: 'Absolute dream'
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