A popular slogan amongst politicians, social workers etc. is how we must “close the gap” between “indigenous” and “non-indigenous” Australians.

The gap in question being the statistic that people claiming Aboriginal descent die an average of 17 years younger than the rest of us.

Life is always full of gaps.

How is it proposed to close this one?

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Today’s doctors come increasingly under pressures that have little to do with medical realities, and everything to do with re-engineering society.

This “gap” issue has become a pretext for a further example of such pressure.

Doctors receive steady streams of slightly threatening “offers” from Medicare and medical registration bodies.

One of them is the ‘Practice Incentives Program’ (PIP).

Part of the PIP is the ‘Indigenous Health Incentive’ . . . .

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The information supplied to doctors regarding the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive says that:

 “This incentive is a key part of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Partnership Agreement on ‘Closing the Gap: Tackling Indigenous Chronic Disease’ . . . .

And that participating doctors are “required to agree to seek consent to register their eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) Co-payment Measure . . . .”

This seems to mean that the doctor – on grounds of race alone – must indicate on some people’s prescriptions that they are to pay nothing.

This would be better described as OPENING A GAP.

The doctor’s other patients are to be punished for being white — or the wrong shade of black.

What will be the punishment for doctors declining to facilitate such race-based injustice? Their fate isn’t quite spelt out in the documents supplied.

Will the punishment involve receiving a smaller fee from Medicare for the same amount of work?

Perhaps it will mean loss of one’s registration to practise medicine at all?

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With the Greens Party now effectively running Australia, can we expect ever more of this kind of nonsense?

We may find more doctors leaving the profession earlier – when they start feeling too strangulated by ideological directives.

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