SOPHIE WALSH, CHANNEL 9: Well, Australia's healthcare system could soon be overhauled and the cost of seeing a GP significantly slashed.
CLINT STANAWAY, CHANNEL 9: The PM this morning to make a re-election promise to boost Medicare by some $8.5 billion. For more on this, we're joined by Minister for Aged Care and Sport Anika Wells in Brisbane. Minister, always great to have your company. Tell us what would these changes mean to everyday Australians? Break it down.
ANIKA WELLS, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND MINISTER FOR SPORT: It means no more having to worry whether you need your Medicare card or your credit card. It means $8.5 billion towards making Medicare available for all Australians. I was out doorknocking in Deagon yesterday. People are worried about the lack of bulk billing services. They have been on the decline. So this will mean that by 2030, nine out of ten, visits to your doctor will be bulk billed. And that's a really good thing.
WALSH: Minister, the latest report from Cleanbill suggested that the number of bulk billing GP clinics has fallen drastically under Labor. How can we be confident that this injection will actually fix that?
WELLS: Yeah. Look, we dispute those figures, but I accept the problem. And it brings me no joy to say that this is as a direct result of Peter Dutton, who was the health minister and froze bulk billing rebates for six long years, which meant that GPs, doctors out in the suburbs and the regions had to cut bulk billing just for the very viability of their practises and that speaks to those numbers you’re talking about.
STANAWAY: [Talks over] Well, Peter Dutton- Peter Dutton and his team would claim that those rates were in the 80s and suddenly they're in the 70s now.
WELLS: Well, I think that speaks to in COVID, in the pandemic, there was a bunch of things like your vaccines and your RATs and your PCRs, et cetera, that were bulk billed. So those numbers might be technically accurate, but they're not really at all representative of the experience that people had and the experience that people are having now of bulk billing. They froze the rate for six years, we’re sweeping in to clean up the mess. It does mean now that we're going to triple the bulk billing, and it means that Australian households by 2030 will be saving $859 million a year on the cost of going to the GP.
STANAWAY: Minister, we've got a budget that's already projected to be in deficit, so how is it being paid for?
WELLS: Well, look, a lot of this has been already accounted for in the MYEFO, which came out at the end of last year, and the remainder of it will be dealt with in the coming budget and I, like all the other ministers, are busy doing our homework on that.
WALSH: Look, Labor is also promising the largest GP training programme in Australian history, which is wonderful. But Minister, where will those trainees actually be sourced from?
WELLS: Yeah, it's right. It's a good point. This isn't just about making you going to the doctor cheaper. It's about trying to find and train more GPs because there has been a trend away from primary care. So this money includes hundreds of millions of dollars as incentives for doctors to train as GPs or as primary care. And if you're a doctor and you can make your entire practise bulk billed, we'll give you a 12.5 per cent uplift to those Medicare rebates as well. So there's a real incentive for everybody to get bulk billing practises up there so that you don't have to pay with your credit card to go to the GP. You can rely upon your Medicare card.
WALSH: Minister for Aged Care and Sport Anika Wells, thank you for joining us this morning.