Labor has promised 18m extra bulk-billed GP visits a year as part of an $8.5bn investment in Medicare, in an announcement shaping as the centrepiece of the Albanese government’s re-election campaign.
Described by the government as the “single largest investment in Medicare since its creation” more than four decades ago, the policy pledge will also include more than 400 nursing scholarships, and 2,000 more doctors through new general practice training programs.
In 2023, the government tripled the bulk-billing incentive for doctors who bulk billed pensioners, concession card holders and families with children. Labor has now said it would expand that incentive to all Australian Medicare cardholders from 1 November.
In addition, GP clinics will be incentivised to bulk bill every patient they see: those that do will get an additional 12.5% loading on their Medicare rebates.
The government says nearly 5,000 GP clinics will be better off if they adopt comprehensive bulk billing under the new scheme, and forecasts the new incentives will mean an additional 18m bulk-billed GP visits every year.
By 2030, the government claims, nine out of 10 GP visits will be bulk billed, saving Australians up to $859m each year in out-of-pocket health costs.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese – who will formally announce the policy on Sunday – said the Medicare commitment was a nation-building policy that would ensure equitable healthcare access.
“I want every Australian to know they only need their Medicare card, not their credit card, to receive the healthcare they need,” he said.
“Labor built Medicare, we will protect it and improve it for all Australians.”
He said lifting bulk billing rates across the country would help ease cost-of-living pressures.
In a portent of an emerging campaign attack line, the health minister, Mark Butler, said Labor’s commitment would restore Medicare funding stripped by the Coalition’s rebate freeze when Peter Dutton held the post.
“Australia’s doctors voted Peter Dutton the worst health minister in Medicare’s history for a reason,” Butler said.
“Peter Dutton tried to end bulk billing with a GP tax and then started a six-year freeze to Medicare rebates that froze GP incomes and stripped billions out of Medicare.
“There is no question that when it comes to Medicare, you’ll be worse off under Dutton.”
The Australian Medical Association estimates nearly $8.3bn will have been lost to GP clinics because of Medicare rebate freezes by 2028.
The Medicare rebate was originally frozen under Labor in July 2012, but it was controversially extended in 2014 – with Dutton as health minister – for four more years, and then again in the Turnbull government’s budget, for another two years until mid-2020.
A re-elected Labor government would commit an additional $617m to training and support for doctors and nurses, including an extra 200 GP training places each year from 2026, increasing to 400 annual places from 2028.
More than $200m will be offered in salary incentives for resident doctors to specialise in GP. There will be an additional 100 commonwealth-supported places a year for medical students, and the government will spend $10m on 400 scholarships for nurses and midwives.
The government said its pledge would be “the largest GP training program in Australian history”, and would fund the training of 2,000 new GP trainees a year by 2028.
The long-term decline of bulk-billing rates has been a tenacious problem for successive governments.
A recent survey by online healthcare directory Cleanbill found an adult patient without concessions would not be able to find a bulk-billing GP in 10% of Australian electorates, including all five electorates in Tasmania.
Twelve electorates nationally have bulk-billing rates exceeding 50%, of which nine are located in western Sydney.
Cleanbill’s Blue Report, published in January, found that for new adult patients without a concession card, four out of five GPs will charge a gap fee.
But Labor cites figures that show a lift in bulk-billing rates since the government tripled bulk-billing incentives for doctors treating pensioners, concession cardholders and children, in November 2023.
Government figures show a 1.7% increase in bulk-billing rates – from 75.6% to 77.3% between November 2023 and October 2024 – an additional 5.4m bulk-billed consultations. More than 2.2m of those were in rural and regional areas.
