Labor’s injection of $3.5 billion to triple the bonus GPs are paid for bulk-billing children, pensioners, and concession cardholders lifted this to 78 per cent in 2024. For children, the bulk-billing rate lifted from 88 per cent to 90 per cent in a year, while for over 65s, it lifted from 86 per cent to 87 per cent.
General adult patients, however, have fared worse, with bulk-billing rates declining from 70 per cent to 69 per cent in a year.
But Sunday’s election commitment aims to turn things around for the millions of Australians who have historically not been eligible for bulk-billing incentives.
How the new payments will work
From November this year, if Labor is re-elected, doctors will get bonuses for bulk-billing all adult Australians – not just children and concession cardholders – while clinics that sign up to bulk-bill every patient will get even larger payments from the government.
The bonuses involve an extra $21.50 payment for each appointment that a GP bulk-bills in metropolitan areas. This lifts to $32.50 in regional centres and keeps increasing until it hits $41.10 per appointment in the most remote communities.
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These are paid on top of the standard Medicare rebate, which is $42.85 for a standard consult under 20 minutes and $82.90 for a 20 to 40-minute appointment.
Labor will also introduce an extra 12.5 per cent boost on all payments for clinics that agree to bulk-bill every patient, which will be paid quarterly.
When all three payments are brought together, metropolitan GP clinics that bulk-bill all adults will have their total government rebate lifted from $42.85 at present to $69.56 under the new policy – an increase of 62 per cent.
For GP clinics that bulk-bill all their adult patients in the most remote locations, government payments will more than double, from $42.85 to $86.91.
The payments have been designed so that doctors only get extra money if they pass on savings to their patients, while the 12.5 per cent boost applied to bulk-billed visits for all age groups should improve clinics’ underlying funding so that they don’t rely as much on charging gap fees.
They are also tailored to deliver greater funding to regional and rural areas, where there are fewer resources.
Health Minister Mark Butler said it would lead to 18 million extra bulk-billed visits each year, saving Australian families a cumulative $859 million a year by 2030.
The government anticipates practices will gradually adopt the new payment plans until 90 per cent of GP visits are bulk-billed by the end of the decade. Butler said this would triple the number of fully bulk-billing practices to 4800 across the country.
Labor will also boost funding for GP training so that 2000 new trainees are brought on board each year by 2028.
Medicare announcement will heighten health debate
The government’s announcement will give it fresh material as it wages an election fight over healthcare.
Labor has already mounted a renewed “Mediscare” attack on the Coalition by emphasising Dutton’s record as health minister in the Abbott government, which was contentious due to an attempt to cut Medicare rebates and introduce a mandatory fee for GP visits.
The Coalition is rebuffing these attacks by pointing to historically high bulk-billing rates from its tenure and reminding voters of how they shrunk under Labor. The government argues it inherited the legacy of a six-year freeze on Medicare rebates, which was initiated by the Gillard government in 2013 as a temporary savings measure but continued until 2018 under the Coalition.
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Butler said Labor’s $8.5 billion would restore every dollar that the Australian Medical Association claimed had been ripped from primary healthcare under the freeze.
“Australia’s doctors voted Peter Dutton the worst health minister in Medicare history for a reason,” he said. “There is no question that when it comes to Medicare, you’ll be worse off under Dutton.”
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor on Sunday said the Coalition would not oppose the bulk-billing package. “We are not going to get in the way of cleaning up the mess that Labor has made,” he told Sky’s Sunday Agenda.
“They are playing catch up; getting back to the numbers they’re talking about is getting back to the numbers when we were in government.”
Taylor said there was no explanation of how the government would pay for the measure while the budget was in deficit.“The big question to them is where’s the money coming from.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said most of the spending had already been accounted for in the mid-year budget update. He said the government had delivered budget surpluses in the past two years to enable it to make important investments.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
