Like many of my colleagues, I couldn’t sleep on Monday night after watching the ABC’s 7.30 report. I was trying to make sense of the articles and newspaper reports claiming doctors were rorting Medicare to the tune of $8 billion a year.

The evidence for this claim is poor. It conflates fraud, low-value care, misunderstandings of the overly complex MBS schedule and overtreatment motivated by profit.

However, to the community, the rhetoric is much simpler: greedy doctors are ‘ripping off’ the taxpayer and doctors are treating patients inappropriately for financial gain.

There are instances of fraud, overbilling and inappropriate practice in any profession, and medicine is not immune. We should be responsive to legitimate criticism, and the community have a right to understand and expect good care and appropriate stewardship of the Medicare dollar.