Revealed: How many GPs have joined Labor’s Medicare bulk billing scheme

Thousands of Australians face continued out-of-pocket costs as less than one in seven metropolitan GP clinics embrace Labor’s Medicare bulk billing scheme.

Health Minister Mark Butler in Parliament last week. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

Labor’s flagship $8.5bn Medicare pledge has so far convinced just 13 per cent of the country’s metropolitan GP clinics to switch to fully bulk billing.

The government’s own data shows of the 4720 city-based practices, 622 have said they will be changing from mixed billing to bulk-billing in addition to the 935 that already see patients for no out-of-pocket cost.

In regional centres, 17 per cent of clinics have said they’ll make the switch, while the rate is highest at 30 per cent in remote communities.

In the country’s very-remote communities, ten of the 130 classified clinics have indicated a change.

Across the country, 1051 of the 6940 clinics are moving to bulk billing. The government’s own metric of success is getting 3600 practices on-board in the first two years after new incentives for GPs came into effect on Saturday as part of its pledge to get 90 per cent of GP visits bulk billed by 2030.

With current rates just under 78 per cent, Health Minister Mark Butler said the number of clinics switching to bulk billing was “growing every single day”, but the government wouldn’t set a six-month target.

“We’ve been relatively conservative about our projections on this. We want to get to 90 per cent bulk billed by the end of the decade,” he said on Sunday.

“This has been a very pleasing initial response though.

“I’m sure a lot of clinics are taking the decision without informing the government, they’re just doing it.

“And I’m sure, as well, that within practices that can’t go 100 per cent bulk billing, they will be bulk billing more patients because of the additional incentives that flowed yesterday.”

According to government figures, in the Melbourne electorate of Hawke 16 of the 32 clinics have said they’ll move to 100 per cent bulk billing, while 18 of the 56 practices in Jim Chalmers’ Logan electorate of Rankin will make the switch.

Many clinics have said they will not sign up to the scheme because they can’t afford to do so, despite Mr Butler’s insistence on Sunday that three-quarters of general practices around Australia are financially better off if they take up the investment than if they do not.

“We don’t expect that every practice will do that immediately. We’re pretty confident this will build over time,” he said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston said the reality was that millions of Australians would still have to use their credit cards to see a GP, and were being changed the highest amount of out-of-pocket costs on record at almost $50 per visit.

“Anthony Albanese is creating false expectations among Australian families at a time when the cost of living pressures, healthcare costs and power bills continue to rise,” she said.

Originally published as Revealed: How many GPs have joined Labor’s Medicare bulk billing scheme