It has never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor than under the Albanese Labor Government, as the data continues to point to a primary care system at crisis point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was reported in the Guardian on Thursday that Australians have lost access to more than 400 dedicated bulkbilling GP clinics over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of Australians accessing bulk billed GP appointments is currently at the lowest level in a decade, and now this sobering new statistic makes it clear that access is only getting worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Anne Ruston, said that affordable healthcare has never been more important than during the current cost-of-living crisis, but bulk billing is still collapsing despite all the taxpayer funds the Government has thrown at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOnce again, the Government clearly prioritised headlines with their bulk billing incentive measure, instead of delivering real and practical solutions like addressing the current workforce crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe know that 1.2 million Australians avoided seeing a doctor last year due to cost, as they were forced to choose between putting food on the table and paying their bills or visiting their GP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMark Butler is misleading Australians about the Government\u2019s success on affordable healthcare, but the statistics tell the real story,\u201d Senator Ruston said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, the GP bulk billing rate right now under Labor is 77.7% – This compares to 84% under Peter Dutton as Health Minister and 88.5% when the Coalition left office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Australians cannot afford for the Government\u2019s inaction on this crisis to continue. Not only is it pushing up out-of-pocket costs for struggling households, but a weakened primary care system will also place additional pressure on already over-burdened hospitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor than under the Albanese Labor Government, as the data continues to point to a primary care system at crisis point. It was reported in the Guardian on Thursday that Australians have lost access to more than 400 dedicated bulkbilling GP clinics over the … Continue reading “More Labor lies on affordable healthcare”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25396,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25395\/revisions\/25396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}