Is our medicare system flawed?

After 30 odd years in General practice I have noticed a few trends.

Gps are asked to do more and more for less and less relative to fellow professionals.

Bureaucratic /government involvement increases.

The corporate medical business model is on the increase and levels of health expenditure(see medicare outlays)continue to rise.

Bulk billing while superficially attractive to the consumer invites Gps to do the minimum and throughput patients every 6 minutes.Often patients themselves go to the doctor for no good reason, are ordered tests for no good reason and asked to come back to hear every thing is normal or given scripts that are also unnecessary.This is very wasteful of resources and bad economic modelling.

The old model of the Gp has been slowly eroded. Where is the mutual trust, respect, ongoing relationships,going the extra mile,sense of duty and commitment.

Bureacrats seek to address the problem areas maldistribution ,after hours ,creating incentives for chronic complex care , mental heath etc and still the Gp gets squeezed when the system (ill conceived )is misused.

Maybe Dr Webber (ex PSR) is right to point to the perversity of a system that invites the level of abuse he alleges not as it reflects on doctors generally (apart from the few really rotten apples )but more so that it spells out evidence of a system that is flawed.

What do we need to do to fix it?

To provide quality care across the full spectrum of general practice to those who need it in a timely fashion at levels of remuneration that make it worth doing.Sounds simple enough.

Any ideas?