Election 2025: ‘You’ll need more than your Medicare card’, Butler admits

Health Minister Mark Butler says some Australians will continue to be charged a gap fee for doctors visits, despite Anthony Albanese telling constituents all they would need is their Medicare card.

Anthony Albanese holding his Medicare card on the campaign trail.

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Health Minister Mark Butler says some Australians will continue to be charged a gap fee for doctors visits, despite Anthony Albanese telling constituents all they would need is their Medicare card to see a GP under a re-elected Labor government.

As the senior ALP frontbencher sought to cement the government’s message that the Coalition was a threat to reliable healthcare, Mr Butler was forced to clarify the Prime Minister’s vow that Australians would be able to leave their credit cards at home when visiting their doctor. “We’ve been very clear with our model. We think that we can get to 90 per cent of bulk billing for non-concessional patients,” Mr Butler said at the National Press Club as part of a debate against his Coalition counterpart, Anne Ruston.

“Our modelling suggests that if GPs take up this offer, those GPs for whom it would be financially beneficial, we can get to 90 per cent of those Australians as well.

“There will be Australians, and we’ve been very clear about this – there will be Australians who will continue to be charged a gap fee. But we think that we can get to 90 per cent for all Australians under these arrangements.”

It follows Mr Albanese promising that, under a re-elected Labor government, “all you need is your Medicare card, not your credit card”, for a doctor’s visit.

Mr Butler said that while bulk billing was financially beneficial for GPs, it was up to each practice how they charged patients.

“At the end of the day, I can’t force GPs to do it,” he said.

“I’m just making the argument it’s in their interests to do it and obviously we believe it’s in the interests of patients as well.”

Health Minister Mark Butler at the National Press Club on Wednesday Picture: Newswire

Senator Ruston leapt on the admission as proof Labor had not been honest with constituents in its campaign messaging.

“The reality is that the Prime Minister has been out there misleading Australians,” she said. “Everyday Australians know that it has never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor and no amount of waving around his Medicare card changes the experience that they’re feeling on the ground right now.”

In the strongest rebuke yet of Labor’s Mediscare campaign, she called Mr Albanese “a political vulture” for weaponising the issue to gain votes.

“Australians, rightly, are proud of Medicare, which is why it has been so disappointing to see the Prime Minister, the leader of this country, behaving like a political vulture, preying on hardworking, elderly, sick and vulnerable Australians using this as a campaign to fuel his Mediscare campaign,” she said.

“Prime Minister, Medicare is not a play thing of yours. It belongs to the Australian people.”

Senator Ruston also came under fire when she was not able to say how many health department jobs would be lost under the Coalition’s commitment to cut the public service by 41,000 staff.

“The one thing we’ve been very, very clear about in discussion in relation to the natural attrition policy of the Coalition, is to make sure that we are focused on delivering frontline services. We have been very clear that no frontline services will be even considered as part of this process,” she said.