EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Subject : Health Insurance Act 1973 Health Insurance Regulations (Amendment)
1989 No. 54
ISSUED ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE MINISTER FOR COMMUNITY SERVICES AND HEALTH
Subsection 133(1) of the Health Insurance Act 1973 (the Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations, not inconsistent with the Act, prescribing all matters required or permitted by the Act to be prescribed, or necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to the Act.
Provider numbers are allocated to medical practitioners for purposes related to the administration of Medicare. They have, until now, been allocated by the Secretary to the Department of Community Services and Health or a person authorised by him. The term ‘provider number’ was defined in the Health Insurance Regulations accordingly.
It was considered, however, that the allocation of these numbers would, in the future, be more appropriately and effectively carried out by the Health Insurance Commission. The above definition of ‘provider number’ needed, therefore, to be amended to allow this to happen. The Regulations have accordingly amended this definition by replacing the previous reference to the Permanent Head with a reference to the Health Insurance Commission.
Regulation 9A of the Health Insurance Regulations previously prescribed, for the purposes of section 100 of the Act, the allowances for expenses payable to witnesses appearing before Medical Services Committees of Inquiry (MSCIs). It also purported to prescribe allowances payable to witnesses appearing before Optometrical Services Committees of Inquiry (OSCIs). Due to an anomaly, however, in the interrelationship between the Act and the Regulations, allowances to witnesses appearing before OSCIs were not legally payable. To date, therefore, no such allowances have been paid.
The Regulations therefore, have amended Regulation 9A to correct this anomaly and prescribe, for the purposes of section 106FE of the Act, allowances payable to witnesses appearing before OSCIs. They will now be in the same position as witnesses appearing before MSCIs. The Regulations also index all such allowances (payable to both MSCI & OSCI witnesses) to those payable to witnesses appearing before the Federal Court.