MARK BUTLER MP
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE

New Medicare billing data shows the Albanese Labor Government’s record investment to strengthen Medicare has created an additional 6 million bulk billed GP visits between November 2023 and December 2024 – an average of 100,000 additional visits each week.
 
In November 2023, the Albanese Labor Government tripled the bulk billing incentive for those who need to see their GP most often: pensioners, concession cardholders, and families with kids and young teenagers.
 
The $3.5 billion investment has been called a “game changer” by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) and has helped to stop what doctors called the “free fall” in bulk billing that began in 2021.
 
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) estimates that the Coalition's six-year freeze to Medicare rebates that Peter Dutton started as Health Minister, has resulted in $8.3 billion being stripped from Medicare by 2027-28.
 
With every year that passed, Medicare covered less of what it actually cost a GP to provide that service.
 
Six months before the 2022 election, the RACGP was calling on every GP in the country to start charging patients to protect the sustainability of general practice. By mid-2022, doctors were saying what the Morrison Government wouldn't admit: bulk billing was in "free fall".
 
Since the Albanese Government’s investment took effect, GPs have said it has given them the confidence to bulk bill more often. In the RACGP’s “Health of the Nation” survey of thousands of doctors late last year, more GPs now say they are bulk billing more patients, more often.
 
Nationally, 77.5 per cent of all GP visits were bulk billed in December 2024, an increase of 1.9 percentage points on October 2023, the final month before the investment took effect.
 
Every state and territory now has more bulk billing, with the largest rise in some states which have historically struggled with lower rates of bulk billing.