Historic investment welcome, but we still need to Modernise Medicare
Australian Medical Association
Leading Australia’s Doctors. Promoting Australia’s Health.
AMA President
Both major political parties have already made it clear healthcare will be a major theme of this year’s federal election campaign.
Before the starting gun for the campaign has even been fired, both parties announced a historic funding commitment for general practice and Medicare.
Labor came out first, committing $8.5 billion in funding — the largest funding announcement since the advent of Medicare in the 1980s.
The Coalition swiftly matched this pledge, effectively guaranteeing this investment regardless of the outcome of this year’s poll.
This bipartisan recognition of the need for significant investment in primary care is a tremendous step forward for our healthcare system and follows years of campaigning by the AMA and, most recently, our Modernise Medicare campaign.
It shows both sides of politics understand the funding shortfall that needs to be reversed to overcome decades of underinvestment and improve the sustainability and affordability of general practice.
The federal government initially tripled the bulk billing incentive for concession card holders and families with children in 2023. Labor, and the Coalition, have now promised to extend this incentive to all Australians from November 1, with an additional incentive for practices that bulk bill all their patients.
We know patients have been delaying care due to cost, and that saddens me. We urgently need investment and reform to turn that around.
The announcements from Labor and the Coalition this February will do part of that — improving the sustainability of our most vulnerable practices, and perhaps allowing some practices who have recently commenced charging a private fee to return to bulk billing.
But it won't improve things for everyone, and many patients will still face out of pocket fees. For many practices even the additional incentive doesn't meet their costs.
With increasing rates of chronic disease, mental illness, and an ageing population, Australians need more time with their GP. Therefore, we must push for a Medicare that better funds longer consultations for everyone. That is the key ask in our Modernise Medicare campaign.?
Our campaign proposes long-overdue reforms to Medicare to ensure it can meet the needs of Australian patients now and into the future.
We have developed a model that proposes a new seven-tier standard consultation item structure that will support patients to spend more time with their doctor by significantly increasing funding for the longer consultations that today’s patients need.?
Our modelling was developed over more than 18 months and was based on consultation with our members, analysis of available GP consultation time data, detailed economic modelling, consideration of the impact of different assumptions and scenarios, and testing against real appointment and billing data provided by members.
Our campaign also includes several calls for significant investment in the GP workforce. I am pleased to say the packages announced by Labor and the Coalition go a long way in directly addressing these calls, including 400 additional GP training places per year by 2028, more than $200 million to fund salary incentives for early-career doctors to specialise in general practice, and $43.9 million for paid parental leave and study leave for GP registrars.
These funding pledges will open new doors for doctors-in-training who otherwise may not have considered a career as a general practice specialist due to the disparity of employment conditions with hospital-based colleagues. This would not have been possible without the sustained advocacy of the AMA, which is a leader in calling for GP workforce reform.
In short, we welcome the considerable Medicare funding commitment from both major parties, but we know there is more work to be done.
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Adjunct Professor, UNSW and QUT
23 小时前So the AMA isn’t talking about the elephant in the room? Any genuine reform of Medicare will include moving to blended payment models in which fee for service is only one element. More or different MBS items might be useful fine-tuning but it’s hardly reform