The Turnbull Government has welcomed data showing that Australia’s Bulk Billing rates have hit an all-time high. From SBS News:
Medicare figures show the bulk billing rate for GP visits hit a new high in 2016-17, with nine in 10 visits to the doctor not costing the patient a cent.
Australians visited a doctor for free a record number of times in the past year, new Medicare figures show.
The bulk billing rate hit 86.1 per cent in 2016-17, as Australians saw a GP for free more than 133 million times.
That’s 5.7 million more appointments than the previous year.Health Minister Greg Hunt says the achievement comes as the federal government is also working to continue bringing down the cost of private health insurance.
The chief medical officer has been tasked with working with the profession to address surprise out-of-pocket medical costs.
“We want a no surprises approach to the fees charged to patients,” Mr Hunt said in a statement.
As is usually the case, the data is not as rosy as the headline suggests, with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) releasing a report showing half of patients incurred out-of-pocket expenses on Medicare services in 2016–17:
The report, Patients’ out-of-pocket spending on Medicare services looks at health services that were delivered outside of hospitals and subsidised by Medicare, including GP, specialist, imaging and obstetric services. While governments contributed $19 billion towards these services in 2016–17, $3 billion was paid for by patients…
The report shows that nationally in 2016‒17, half of patients (10.9 million patients) paid something from their own pockets toward their services. The remaining half had the full cost for all of their non-hospital Medicare services covered by the government.
This is different from the usually reported bulk-billing rate for GP services that were completely paid for by the government. In 2016–17, 86% of GP services were bulk-billed while 66% of patients had all of their GP services bulk-billed…
Key Findings:
- Half of all patients—10.9 million people—incurred out-of-pocket costs for non-hospital Medicare services.
- For these patients with costs, the median amount spent in the year was $142 per patient. This means that half of patients with costs spent more than $142, and half spent less. The median out-of-pocket cost per patient varied across Primary Health Network (PHN) areas, from $104 to $206 per patient.
- The 10% of patients with the highest costs spent at least $601 or more in the year. Across PHN areas, this ranged from $432 to $876 per patient.
- Patients were more likely to pay for specialist and obstetric services. These services also attracted the highest out-of-pocket costs per service.
- The percentage of patients with out-of-pocket costs for diagnostic imaging services was 5 times as high in Australian Capital Territory PHN area (44%) than South Western Sydney PHN area (8%). This ranged from 3% to 65% of patients across smaller local areas (SA3s)
- 7% of people aged 15 years and over, or an estimated 1.3 million people, said the cost of services was the reason that they delayed or did not seek specialist, GP, imaging or pathology services when they needed them. This percentage ranged from 4% to 11% across PHN areas.
