A great day for Albo’s Mediscam

Albo during the 2025 election with his ubiquitous but otherwise useless Medicare card

Every time I see Albo wave his Medicare card around, I know he is gaslighting us. Labor has promised to increase the number of bulk-billing general practitioners (GPs) and to ensure that most Australians will be no more than a 20-minute drive away from a bulk-billing clinic.

In the lead-up to the election, the Australian Association of Practice Management said it was all ‘smoke and mirrors’. Here’s how the details are massaged.

Writing in the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes had this to say:

Michael de Percy has also revisited Labor’s Mediscare 3.0 (or is it 4.0?) and labels it, with good reason, Mediscam. In that, he is perfectly right. I have some skin in the health policy game, not least around what patients pay for GP services. Given that, I predict Labor’s $9 billion GP bulk-billing boondoggle will not raise Medicare rebates high enough to tempt GPs to socialise their billings much, if any, more than they are now. It was rubbish when it was announced, it was rubbish when the Coalition stupidly ‘me-tooed’ it, and it is rubbish now.

My election coverage in The Spectator Australia, A great day for Albo’s Mediscam.

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