22 JANUARY, 2020
Breakthrough: 2019-20 Natural Therapy Review update
On 9 April 2019, the Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, announced new ‘review updates’ of 16 natural therapies that were stripped of Private Health Insurance (PHI) rebate eligibility just a week earlier. The Minister announced the new review program on the back of a large public campaign initiated by Your Health Your Choice between February and March 2019.
Problems with Review Terms of Reference:
Immediately, problems became apparent with the 2019-20 Review Terms of Reference (ToR). Perhaps the biggest of these was that the ToR specified that only ‘additional evidence published since the 2014-15 review’ would be considered. This risked legitimising substantial flaws and deficiencies associated with the 2014-15 review and creating a narrow (post-2015) window of evidence to work with.
1 NOVEMBER, 2019
UPDATE: Natural Therapies Review 2019-20
On 7 April 2019, the Minister for Health (the Hon Greg Hunt) announced new 2019-20 review updates of 16 natural therapies. This was the result of 13,324 people writing to the Minister via the Your Health Your Choice campaign in Feb-Mar 2019 protesting removal of Private Health Insurance rebates for natural therapies from 1 April 2019.
There are promising signs that the Government has taken heed of public pressure and taken steps towards ensuring that the 2019-20 reviews are conducted more transparently and ethically than their 2014-15 counterparts, which were designed with the intent to remove health fund rebates for natural therapies.
Appointment of Expert Advisory Panel and Working Committee:
The Government has formed a Natural Therapies Review Advisory Panel (NTREAP) to advise the Chief Medical Officer on the new reviews, which includes a balanced mix of complementary medicine subject/ research experts. Membership of the NTREAP and its terms of reference can be viewed here.
To oversee the actual review work, the Government has again put the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in charge of this task, despite concerns over bias and impropriety in its execution of the 2014-15 reviews, alongside an ongoing Commonwealth Ombudsman misconduct investigation.
11 SEPTEMBER, 2019
2019-20 Natural Therapy Review Panel meets for the first time in Canberra
TODAY, 11 September 2019, the Department of Health in Canberra hosted the first meeting of the Natural Therapies Review Expert Advisory Panel (NTREAP) to oversee ‘review updates’ of 16 natural therapies stripped of Private Health Insurance benefits in April this year.
The 2019-20 review is being led by Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, and according to the Terms of Reference (ToR) will be conducted in two tranches:
Tranche 1 will examine naturopathy, western herbalism, yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates and Shiatsu.
Tranche 2 will examine the Alexander technique, aromatherapy, Bowen therapy, Buteyko, Feldenkrais, homeopathy, iridology, kinesiology, reflexology and Rolfing.
Public protest via the Your Health Your Choice campaign over removal of Private Health Insurance (PHI) rebates for natural therapies resulted in the Government announcing on 7 April 2019, a $2 million review update program to determine which natural therapies are once again eligible to attract the PHI rebate.
The announcement came after 13,324 Australians wrote to the Health Minister, local Liberal National Party (LNP) members and State LNP Senators between February and March 2019 protesting the policy and demanding that rebates be restored.
28 AUGUST, 2019
NHMRC buckles under public pressure and releases buried first report
Sustained public and Parliamentary pressure has resulted in the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) releasing the first taxpayer funded report on homeopathy it commissioned and buried in 2012.
As suspected, the First Review concluded “encouraging evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy” in several medical conditions. Despite NHMRC’s attempts to water down this finding by releasing an ‘annotated’ version, this remains the author’s conclusion.
The release also confirms the thoroughness of the work completed, resulting in a 281-page document that was presented to the NHMRC in an advanced final draft form.
13 JULY, 2019
Will Government natural therapy review updates be safeguarded from bias this time around?
Public protest through the Your Health Your Choice campaign over removal of Private Health Insurance (PHI) rebates for natural therapies resulted in the Government announcing on 7 April 2019, a $2 million review update program to determine which natural therapies are once again eligible to attract the PHI rebate.
The announcement came after 13,324 Australians wrote to the Health Minister, local Liberal National Party (LNP) members and State LNP Senators between February and March 2019 protesting the policy and demanding that rebates be restored.
The Government based its policy to remove rebates on reviews coordinated by the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) between 2012 and 2014. These reviews were already several years out of date by the time the policy was adopted.
8 APRIL, 2019
BREAKING: $2mil pledged to update natural therapy reviews
Review of natural therapies for private health insurance
The Your Health Your Choice consumer campaign welcomes the Liberal National Government’s announcement to commission an updated review of natural therapies, including a five year update to its 2014-15 review of natural therapies – providing it is done transparently and ethically.
YHYC spokesperson Ms Petrina Reichman said, “This announcement is a result of the LNP bowing to pressure from the 13,323 Australians that personally wrote to Minister Hunt and LNP MPs and Senators since February this year, in addition to thousands of others that wrote to Minister Hunt after the policy became law in September 2018.” Other groups and experts have also presented the Government with up to date research demonstrating effectiveness for many of the affected therapies.
YHYC is Australia’s largest consumer driven campaign advocating for healthcare choice. It has successfully galvanised public outrage at the removal of Private Health Insurance rebates for natural therapies, alongside the ban on health insurers independently offering rebates for these widely used therapies if they wished.
“The Minister and the LNP have been flooded with protest from consumers on a scale that simply could not be ignored”, said Ms Reichman. “Removal of natural therapy rebates pushes costs to consumers and makes private health insurance less worthwhile”, she said.
A poll of nearly 4,000 people conducted by YHYC in 2018 showed that 95% would either cancel (50%) or reduce (45%) their level of private health cover if the policy went ahead.
5 DECEMBER, 2018
Why is there an Ombudsman Complaint against the NHMRC?
An information reel every Australian needs to see. The 13 minute information reel below reveals details of how Australia’s peak medical research body, the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC), set about reviewing the evidence on a natural therapy it had no prior subject, clinical or research expertise in.
This is not a story about homeopathy – the topic could be anything. It’s a story about truth and integrity, how a government agency used taxpayer money and leveraged its statutory power and reputation to “assure” the public that it conducted a “transparent” process using “standardised, accepted methods”.
17 OCTOBER, 2018
Politics or science? The Government review of Naturopathy – what you need to know
Despite a wealth of scientific research on natural medicine published in peer-reviewed journals, the Government’s Review of the Australian Government Rebate on Private Health Insurance for Natural Therapies concluded that there is “no clear evidence demonstrating the effectiveness” of 17 widely used natural therapies, including Naturopathy and Herbal Medicine. The Review’s findings have been used to justify removing private health fund rebates for widely used natural therapies.
When zero published scientific papers on Naturopathy and Herbal Medicine were actually reviewed in reaching this conclusion, can we trust the conclusion and was it based on sound scientific principles?
The following article provides an in-depth analysis of the flaws associated with the Natural Therapies review for Naturopathy. Download PDF Article
