Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Health and Aged Care has indicated he is seeking to add to an answer.

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

I seek to add to my answer in relation to bulk-billing and the 88 per cent figure used by the Manager of Opposition Business.

I refer to statements made by the vice president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in August 2022 in relation to the 88 per cent figure quoted by the Manager of Opposition Business in which the vice president, Dr Bruce Willett, agreed government bulk-billing figures were misleading and significantly skewed. He said that more patients including those most disadvantaged had been struggling to find a bulk-billing doctor. He said:

This 88% figure sounds impressive … However, this is misleading and refers to total GP services.

Some patients are being bulk billed for parts of their appointment but still paying out-of-pocket costs …

On closer inspection, the proportion of patients who had all their general practice care bulk billed is only 67.6% nationally …

He went on to say:

Government bulk-billing figures were also skewed by Covid. GP clinics have administered millions of Covid-19 vaccinations, all of which are bulk billed, and certain patient groups were bulk billed for all telehealth consultations for a large part of 2020.

This means that the resulting bulk-billing data looks a lot rosier than is actually the case.