Since the demise of the Abbott government’s $7 mandatory GP co-payment 2014 budget measure, Medicare bulk billing for general practitioner services has become more of an untouchable sacred cow than ever. It has become as preserved in political aspic as the sclerotic, chaotic and inefficient National Health Service has long been in Britain, and it will be no surprise if, in 2032, the Brisbane Olympics opening ceremony features a homage to bulk-billed Medicare, just as London 2012 starred the dancing beds of the NHS.

This hasn’t stopped the Albanese government from resorting to another “mediscare” to denounce its Coalition opponents. After Bill Shorten’s highly successful mediscare 1.0 in 2016, conjured from a modest administrative proposal to reorganise the Medicare back office, almost defeated then-PM Malcolm Turnbull and set the clock ticking on Turnbull’s leadership, Labor has returned to the well again and again to frame itself as the defender of Medicare against conservative Visigoths seeking to destroy it.