Australia’s health system is under significant pressure. The Labor government has inherited a system with declining bulk-billing rates for GP visits. These fell from almost 90% of all GP attendances bulk billed in December 2021 to just over 80% a year later.
Significant workforce shortages remain in rural and remote Australia, despite a raft of incentive programs to improve access to health care. In 2021–22, about 3.5% of adults did not see a GP because of cost, with higher rates of missed care outside metropolitan areas.
Policymakers may have relied on ineffectual financial incentives because they thought they were precluded from stronger actions, such as limiting doctors’ access to rebates in areas of oversupply. However, as we argue in the Federal Law Review, these constraints have been overstated.
