Howard Jenings

Our son had to see the doctor last month and we paid $55.00 to see the doctors and $21.00 for the prescription. My other son has just seen the out of hours doctor and we paid $15.00 to se the doctor.

We have just got our medicare cards this week -the reciprocal agreement as we are on 457 - do I go to medicare to claim these payments back? Will they be fully refunded?

moneypenny20

Providing you have the full detailed receipts, just go to the Medicare office, take a refund ticket and get some money back. You won't get anything back on the prescription and you'll get approx $30 bucks back on the first appointment. Because the out of hours doc was only $15 you may not get that back. I thought out of hours doctors were all bulk billed. Obviously wrong. Maybe it was refunded automatically so you only ended up paying $15.

kips

I work for Medicare. If Medicare item number 23 was used for the first consultation then the refund is $33.55. Medicare also pays a benefit for out-of-hours consultations. Item 5020 pays $44.45 if that was the number used. Doctors can charge what they like and don't have to bulk bill so you can end up with varying out of pocket expenses depending on what your doctor charges. Medicare pays 85% of the schedule fee (this is an amount set by Medicare and the government) for visits to GPs, specialists and things like X-rays, blood tests and scans done outside hospital ie as an outpatient.

Gems

Remember next time you go to the doctors just show the medicare card.
You should get kids bulk billed which is free if you give the receptionist your card details.

You cant get money back for the medication.

Just take your receipts to the medicare office near Coles and you should get something back.

Gems

slipshot

Not in Melbourne - very hard to find a bulk billing doctor where we are, in fact we could not find one, without then travelling miles to get to one if we did, which rather defeats the purpose in the long run.

Kids and adults are charged the same at our doctors - $ 65 a time.

With prescriptions, unlike the UK it is a buyers market so you can negotiate for repeat prescriptions and shop around. Our daughter is on epilepsy medicine which we paid the $7.50 per bottle in the UK on the NHS.

Price over here was $30 per bottle but with some shopping around through a discount chemist we pay $16 a bottle - so about the same as did in the UK.

And given we HAD to have exactly the same brand and everything, we were not going to risk it, the chemist looked into it, found it and sorted it all. Worked well...