The insurers are already looking at the price tag
The Board sells the five-year degree as a faster pathway. Medibank's submission asks the question students should be asking: how will funders pay a lower-qualified psychologist?
Mental health policy
Funding, Better Access and how the system is designed.
When a university says it might "exit the market entirely", believe it
The five-year degree is pitched as a way to train more psychologists, faster. The University of Western Australia's submission warns it could leave us with fewer.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK are all lowering health training standards. Why?
Clinicians in four countries are describing the same reforms in the same language. The pattern traces back to UK right-touch regulation, and the real question it avoids is how much we are willing to pay for quality care.
The new pathway to becoming a psychologist: what the training reform is really about
The proposed five-year pathway is pitched as fixing a shortage of placements and supervisors. The real shortage is placements at the price the system wants to pay, and the reform's answer to that has consequences for the whole profession.
Can psychologists make a diagnosis? Yes, but that's not the real question
Australian psychologists are trained and qualified to diagnose. Whether that diagnosis is accepted is about who controls the money, and about a DSM being used for purposes it was never designed for.