Medicare turns 40: is Australia’s ‘little green card’ keeping up with changing health needs?

Julie Stokes, Michelle Rheuben and Lea Armitage explain Medicare to a customer at the Bondi Junction Medicare office on 31 January 1984. Photograph: Paul Matthews/Fairfax Media

When Dr Brian Morton became a trainee general practitioner in 1977, healthcare bills were the No 1 cause of personal bankruptcies in Australia.

On more than one occasion Morton provided treatment to patients who couldn’t afford to pay. “If someone turned up, you wouldn’t turn them away,” he says.