Let’s face it, we’ve been wading through poo all year long.
Yes, it’s that time of year again. It’s time for the Golden Enema awards.
And the runners-up in 2025 are:
Removal of mental health item billing codes
How can we incentivise GPs to tackle mental health problems? I know! By removing all of their incentives!
On 1 November mental health codes, including mental health plan reviews and mental health consults, were lifted from the list of billable Medicare items.
Surely this isn’t just another cynical way to reduce GP earnings while saving the taxpayer some money so that more cash can be tipped into the endlessly rorting pit of the NDIS?
Where are those might crusaders against Medicare rorting when you need them?
100% bulk billing
Practices need to keep the lights on and promising a small cash incentive is like swilling out a giant bucket of pig’s blood in front of a tiger shark.
The problem is that this has driven a colossal wedge between GPs who bulk bill and those who don’t.
And of course, if the UK experience is anything to go by, the new level of state control will inevitably lead to capitation and QOF and the long sorry road to salaried ruin.
Remember, after the carrot comes the stick, and after the stick will be a baseball bat with a barbed wire wraparound.
Bribes to work in SA
The Liberals want to offer $40,000 to bribe IMGs to come and work in Adelaide.
Yes, Adelaide has everything to offer. It has knife crime and car theft, mullets, utes and syphilis, not to mention a burgeoning homelessness problem.
Even the Royal Adelaide Hospital, one of the most expensive hospitals ever built, doesn’t have enough beds, which is why patients get put up in local hotels across the road.
On the bright side everyone and his dog is off their tits on prescribed cannabis and dexamphetamines.
Adoption of AI
We all know that AI hallucinates and none of us have a clue where it’s going, which is why roughly four in 10 GPs now use AI-powered scribes in the consult room.
The medico-legal warning to “check all notes” has become ubiquitous, but how exactly does one check AI notes?
The simple answer is one doesn’t, because one doesn’t have time. Not a very good excuse if you later rely on those notes in court.
Let’s be honest, AI should be reserved for lonely men who want to knock one out to a fake girlfriend.
The winner!
This year’s Golden Enema Award goes to poorly regulated cannabis clinics.
The rise of single-issue cannabis clinics with little or no regulation is the scandal of 2025.
It’s almost as if the government and Big Pharma wants to make a truckload of money out of sedating and controlling its otherwise restive population.
As an idea it rivals Soma and would make Aldous Huxley proud.
This year’s lucky winner gets a second-hand stethoscope and a free one-way trip to Adelaide.
