Saving the Post Office !

There is no doubt that out post office system is under threat.   We have just seen the cost of posting a letter jump ten cents to seventy cents and there is every chance that the daily delivery to suburban letterboxes will soon retreat from five days a week - to just three.   The flow of mail through the postal system is declining in the electronic age and a once " cash cow " is becoming a drain on the public purse.

The postal service is a remarkable institution.   It is nation wide and provides the only identity that has a presence in every suburb, town and even village across the entire length of Australia.   The obvious way to save the post office is to expand the services it provides - and one obvious answer is to make it the claims office for settling Medicare and Pharmaceutical benefit claims.

Eighty percent of GP visits are bulk billed but  non bulk billed claims amount to 344 million transactions each year and there are 211 million pharmaceutical refunds processed through the system.   Surely that is enough work to rejuvenate the tired old post office system and provide a better, faster service to the public.

There are reservations about privacy issues.   Obtaining a Medicare card involves revealing personal details and that is handled either through Centrelink or specialised Medicare offices.     The function of allowing the post offices to process claims is merely a clerical process without access to anything other than money disbursement.   The main gain is the accessibility of post offices in contrast to the few Medicare offices still remaining.

If the post office system is to be saved in it's present form it will need a change of thinking on the part of both state and the Federal governments.   It is unique in that post offices are the only nation wide institution to which every citizen has access.   It should be the focal point of doing business with every arm of government and serve as the representative of every government service.   Everything from registering a car to applying for a passport should be possible at that one localised distribution point, rather than scattered widely across the city - and without any representation in lesser population centres.

Making the post office the representative for Medicare and Pharmaceutical benefits would be the first step in widening the range of services.   The fact that it alone has the capacity to reach the broadest scope of the Australian population should attract the attention of private industry.    What the post office system is offering is the opportunity to present services or products Australia wide by utilising a network that is already in place -  and has unused capacity.   To the far sighted - that spells  "  Opportunity  " !