MS Australia isn’t happy. It says the new pricing structure for the NDIS will hurt the sector and the disability community.

It’s not the therapists who’ll suffer, says MS Australia. Nor the administrators, nor the consultants. It’s the person with multiple sclerosis, sitting in a suburban lounge in Townsville, needing a podiatrist to stop a worsening foot drop. The problem? Her provider has shut down.

MS Australia’s furious response to last week’s NDIS pricing review isn’t just another sectoral whinge. It’s a warning flare. The organisation says the decision to cut price limits for essential therapy services — physiotherapy, dietetics, and podiatry — and freeze rates for more complex support coordination risks destabilising an already strained system.

Member organisations of MS Australia are already propping up the system by subsidising unfunded supports. But this latest move, they say, may well tip others over the edge. As pricing tightens, smaller, disease-specific providers — the ones who understand the complexity of neurological conditions — will fold. And with them goes the nuanced care clients rely on.

MS Australia has tried to alert government to this issue. Over the past decade it’s written more than 30 policy submissions. Their campaign for “A Better NDIS” did secure a neurological advisory body. But this pricing decision — made without full transparency and before the government has even responded to last year’s major NDIS Review — undermines that progress.

This isn’t just a bureaucratic failure. It’s a moral one. When people living with MS can no longer access the therapy they need, says MS Australia, that’s not just an accounting issue. That’s abandonment.

When Economics Trumps Care

On the surface, reducing therapy travel costs and billing in 10-minute increments might look like streamlining. In practice, it means rural participants — who already face thin markets — lose out. Removing remote loadings for plan management is an urban policy dressed in national clothing. In Tennant Creek, it’s a death sentence for access.

MS Australia has been careful not to throw punches in public. But the gloves are now off. The organisation is demanding the release of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority’s report — which remains buried, for reasons unexplained. And it wants urgent review of the decisions, not vague promises of “consultation over 18 months.”

Here’s the real danger: providers can’t make long-term staffing or investment decisions on year-to-year pricing chaos. The NDIA’s pledge to adjust the pricing calendar is a start — but it’s lipstick on a crumbling pig.

Without sustainable pricing, the specialist workforce shrinks. Participants lose options. Market competition fails. And when choice and control collapses, the whole point of the NDIS dissolves.

This isn’t theoretical. Providers are cancelling appointments. Staff are quitting. Participants are spiralling.

The government talks about reform, but reform that saves money without maintaining services is austerity, not sustainability.

If the Albanese Government wants to protect the NDIS, it can’t wait until December. It must respond to the Review now — and put care, not cost, at the centre of its decision-making.