Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8746
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Stafford A.
AMA seeks ban on controversial ads
The Age (Melbourne) 2007 Mar 2
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/ama-seeks-ban-on-controversial-ads/2007/03/01/1172338796107.html
Full text:
THE country’s largest doctors’ group will ask the competition watchdog to outlaw advertising of medical treatments such as heart checks and hearing tests amid fears that profit-hungry companies are exploiting Medicare.
The Australian Medical Association will tell the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that the public interest in banning advertising to consumers outweighs competition considerations, AMA secretary-general Robyn Mason told an AMA dinner this week.
Dr Mason’s comments came after federal Health Minister Tony Abbott told the same dinner he was considering measures to crack down on the advertising of medical services. Mr Abbott also called on the AMA to come out in support of a ban on such advertising, which Association’s President Mukesh Haikerwal said he would ask the Association’s federal council to consider.
“I instinctively feel uncomfortable about this,” Mr Abbott told The Age. “I think it does raise policy issues when services are spruiking that they can be fully bulk-billed (to Medicare). Clinics like these are tapping into powerful emotions to drum up demand for government-funded services.”
With straplines like “Heart Attack Can Strike Without Warning, get yourself checked!” and – in the case of one internet site – “100 per cent covered by Medicare”, there are fears that some companies are encouraging healthy people to have tests they don’t need at Medicare’s expense.
At 602,159, the number of Medicare rebates claimed for cardiovascular items in the past three months of 2006 was 21 per cent higher than the number claimed over the same period in 2003, according to an analysis of Medicare items by The Age.
The total cost to Medicare of these items was $27.7 million in the last quarter of 2006, 39 per cent higher than it was in the same period of 2003.
But Heart Check Group spokesman Richard Doyle said it was “ridiculous” to suggest Heart Check was targeting or attracting people who didn’t need to have tests. “The majority of our advertisements are aimed at people with risk issues,” he said. Call centre staff and doctors also had “strict instructions” not to accept people who didn’t have risk factors for heart attack, which can include chest discomfort, breathlessness or a family history of heart problems.
