Step By Step – Labor Hoping to get a Second Time Around

SO we’re getting Labor’s election promises now, ahead of a probably March 25 budget and some time before May 17 election. Today’s was building on their increased bulk billing incentives for concession card holders and kids, something I described as killing universal bulk billing. lol. Was I wrong though? The announcement today is trying to extend that to all Medicare card holders, but only if the GP becomes exclusively bulk billing. I have a  few concerns.

The rate for GPs to bulk bill will be $69.56 in the cities. My GP currently charges $80 upfront for those one concessions and $100 for regular Medicare card holders. Those rates seem pretty standard, and are higher in some places. So you’re asking GPs to take a $30+ cut per session to become bulk billing again.

It only applies if ALL patients are bulk billed. I’m sure many of us have had doctors in the past that have sometimes bulk billed (especially for follow up appointments or if they’ve asked us back) but also sometimes privately billed. So they won’t have that flexibility.

I’m going to assume it won’t, but I hope that GPs currently only bulk billing concession patients won’t lose those current incentives if they choose not to add regular patients to bulk billing.

The Medicare rebate remains around $43 for a regular level B consult, and doesn’t look to be going up any time soon. So privately billed patients who are then claiming rebates will continue to be $35-$55 out of pocket a session (using my GP’s current pricing).

There’s also concerns that this won’t apply to Mental Health and Enhanced Primary Care health planning sessions and these will continue to be a barrier to people seeking mental health and other allied health care.

There’s been lobbying around increasing the number of mental health (currently 10) and general allied health (currently 5 total) session people can claim on Medicare. Haven’t seen much about increasing the rebates for those (HUGE gaps huge huge gaps) especially with trying to keep people out of NDIS who need these. We’ll see.

So those are my Sunday thoughts.

It looks like I’m going to be using my words for an Online panel on March 11 – “Talking about Poverty: How to have conversations online, in the community and in the media” as a leadup event to the People Against Poverty conference mid-year. It’s free to come! And I’m terrified!

Let’s go!