Labor saddles up old warhorse to enter election campaign fray

Medicare, for Labor, is a headland achievement and a useful battering ram come election time. The long history of Coalition hostility to a universal health scheme makes so-called “Medi-scare” tactics a hardy perennial in Australia’s political landscape.

Now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is gearing up to make major boosts to bulk-billing, urgent care clinics and the GP workforce as he seeks to turn Medicare into a key plank of his cost-of-living pitch at the federal election.

The Herald’s Paul Sakkal and Natassia Chrysanthos report that the government is working on policies to make it cheaper to see a doctor and emphasise its focus on Medicare, playing up a contrast to Peter Dutton, whose record as health minister in the Abbott government was contentious due to an attempt to create a $7 fee for GP visits and his infamous 2014 ministerial opinion that Medicare was on its last legs.

Government sources have told the Herald they’re expecting to lift the bulk-billing incentive paid to GPs and pledge more urgent care clinics to broaden their national coverage and move from fees for appointments towards a yearly lump sum for clinics to cut quick, low-value visits.

Labor needs to do something about bringing GPs back into the fold.

Bulk-billing rates are even lower than they were during the Morrison government years. The Albanese government has been unable to halt the flight of doctors and fewer are bulk-billing regular adult patients than they were a year ago. Although children, pensioners and concession card holders have benefited from an injection of $3.5 billion toward bulk-billing, GPs are charging increasing numbers of general patients the full tariff.

With Labor and the opposition neck and neck in polling, Albanese is likely to use a set-piece speech to reveal the health promises, but that has not stopped Health Minister Mark Butler breathing life into the old monster. “Labor will strengthen Medicare, while Peter Dutton will wreck it,” he told the Herald.

The Coalition said resuscitating “Medi-scare” was aimed at distracting from government failures. The Coalition has not threatened cuts to health spending, but then again, nor has it revealed major policies for fixing general practice and boosting Medicare.

We need to enhance Medicare, not allow it to become eroded as has happened for years while governments and oppositions scored points and shifted costs.

The universal healthcare system is the jewel in Australia’s policy crown, built on the principle that access to treatment should not be contingent on wealth or location. It distinguishes us favourably from countries we most often measure ourselves against, the United States and Britain, where being both poor and sick is a far more desperate prospect than in Australia (though that combination is bad enough here, even with the protection of Medicare).

Precisely because it is so precious, Medicare is vulnerable. Governments and oppositions seem to forget it is a core component of the health of every Australian and that their duty is to ensure it remains of benefit to all consumers.

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