Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to help Australians with the cost of health care, and why has health care become so expensive?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lingiari for her question but also for her wise advice about the delivery of healthcare services in her community in the Northern Territory. She also knows that it's never been harder to see a GP in Australia than it is right now, and it has never been more expensive. More Australians than ever before are having to pay a gap fee to see the doctor, and those gap fees have skyrocketed over the past decade. For the first time in the history of Medicare, the average gap fee for a standard GP consult is now more than the Medicare rebate itself, and gap fees to see a specialist skyrocketed by a whopping 100 per cent over the past decade.

This massive increase to the cost of health care didn't just spring from thin air. This huge hit on household budgets was the inevitable consequence of the short but infamous tenure of the man voted by Australia's doctors as the worst health minister in the history of Medicare, the now Leader of the Opposition. Australians will never forget, after promising there would be no cuts to health under him as health minister, his first budget tried to rip $50 billion from hospitals, tried to jack up the price of every medicine script by $5 and tried to slug every single Australian—every pensioner, every child, every concession card holder—with a tax on every single visit to the doctor. Then, after we blocked his radical, extremist agenda in the Senate, he instead imposed a six-year-long Medicare rebate freeze, cutting billions and billions of dollars from general practice.

The contrast between that and our first budget could not be clearer. Our first budget delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS, a $12.50 cut to the general scripts—not a $5 fee increase, which would have happened under the health minister then, the now Leader of the Opposition, if he got his way. In our budget, $200 million is back in the pockets of hardworking Australians. That's good for household budgets and good for the health of Australians, helping them ensure that they could afford the scripts that their doctors had prescribed as important for their health.

Our cheaper medicines policy is already making a difference to millions of Australians. Lyn from Canberra wrote to us recently. She said: 'My prescriptions have gone down since January 1st. This is such a welcome change for someone trying to manage a chronic illness and not eligible for a healthcare card.' For this side of the House, it's all part of our commitment to strengthening Medicare and providing Australian households with responsible, targeted cost-of-living relief.