[Jan Fisher]

The health minister Mark Butler has made the laughable comment that people who need bulk billing should just ‘ring around’ and find a doctor who offers it.

Mr Butler clearly hasn’t been on ground zero of medical access lately.

Not only will doctors not guarantee bulk billing for every appointment even if they do offer it, people in remote and regional Australia don’t have the luxury of ‘ringing around’.

When I lived in regional Victoria almost every clinic was closed to patients and unless it was urgent you had a two-week wait to see a doctor. This was in a city of 50,000, not exactly a dusty hamlet.

Mr Butler claims about 73 per cent of all GP appointments were bulk billed, and I’d like to know where he got his figures because he doesn’t provide them.

The government has increased the incentives for bulk billing, but only for children under 16, pensioners and some commonwealth concession card holders.

Does your doctor offer bulk billing? Would you be willing to change doctors if they offered bulk billing?

[Oldchick]

I agree it’s not easy to get in to see a doctor but at least this Government have tried to implement changes, not like the previous lot who seemed to think everyone was on the same income as them and it wasn’t their concern. As a DSP I spend a mega amount each year on medicines and specialist services. Until Labor came in I also had to pay for my regular Doctor visits because the Government wouldn’t increase the amount they did get back per visit. This Government have done that and now I can see a Doctor and its bulk billed. The medical system is broken, but it’s a worldwide problem and won’t be fixed overnight.

[Des]

A small amount of research would have answered the question, but it seems to be beyond Jan.

“JOURNALIST: Fewer than one in four GP clinics nationwide bulk bill all their patients. Backbenchers are saying publicly that medical bills are one of the key concerns for their constituents. Will you have to do something more in this area, ahead of the Budget?

BUTLER: We’re getting about the job of implementing the Budget measures right now. And these are very significant investments. It’s important to be clear how you are measuring bulk billing. The data you’re referring to measures how many general practices bulk bill every patient, for every service, that comes through their doors. That is one measure. It’s not the measure that we choose to use in the government. The measure we’ve been using after, frankly, overhauling the way in which the former government reported on bulk billing data, which we thought lacked transparency, is to ask how many GP consults are bulk billed. At the moment, it’s about 75% of GP consults across the country are bulk billed. As I said, in response to Andrew’s question, those numbers are very different depending on what market you’re looking at: Tasmania, relatively low, Western Sydney, relatively high, most of the country somewhere in between. But there’s no question that that healthcare costs, whether it’s medicines or the cost of going to a doctor, is a key cost of living pressure. And that’s why it was such a feature of our 2023 Budget.”

https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/media/minister-for-health-and-aged-care-press-conference-29-january-2024?language=en

[Author]

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