Healthy politicking from Dutton over Medicare spend

Anthony Albanese was no doubt expecting Medicare to be an election battleground, but Peter Dutton’s immediate commitment to match Labor’s spend on greater access to bulk-billing GPs has skewed the debate.

Instead of who will commit the most to the nation’s health system, the contest on that front will now be more about who will be trusted with it the most.

The Prime Minister went out on Sunday (23 February) to remind the nation that Labor created Medicare and has a track record of protecting it.

“Labor built Medicare for Australia – and it was built on the Australian values of fairness and opportunity for all,” the PM said.

“We don’t want our health system to be more American. We don’t need to copy the ideologies of any other nation.

“We only want our health system to be more Australian. There for more Australians to count on. Free for more Australians to use.

“Only our Labor Government believes in that. Only our Labor Government will deliver it.”

The PM went on to announce his intention to expand the bulk-billing incentive to cover all Australians – from 11 million people to “all 26 million of us”.

Making sure we all knew it would be the biggest single boost to Medicare in its history, Albo outlined a commitment to deliver $8.5 billion to the scheme to get bulk-billing “up to full strength” and give every GP an incentive to provide services with no out-of-pocket costs to their customers.

The new GP practice incentive payment to bulk-bill will go to every doctor in every practice that commits to bulk-billing “every patient, every time” and will mean three times as many GP practices will be fully bulk-billing.

It’s a solid commitment. Good policy.

So, what was Mr Dutton’s response?

Basically, the Opposition Leader said: “Yeah, we’ll do that, too.”

That was a clever political move by Dutton, who now can’t be accused of trying to deny more Australians greater access to free GP visits.

The Coalition frontbenchers immediately responded on Sunday by saying they wouldn’t oppose the spending. They even offered a mirrored commitment of their own, pushing the line that it will take that much to “clean up Labor’s mess” in the health system.

Perhaps pre-empting the Opposition Leader’s move, Albanese’s speech also reminded everyone of what happened when Dutton was actually health minister in a former Coalition government.

“Peter Dutton’s number one priority as health minister was a GP tax designed to destroy bulk-billing altogether,” the PM said.

“He wanted to impose a medicine tax. And a hospital tax on every Australian who had to seek care at an emergency department.

“And when he couldn’t get his way, he launched a six-year freeze on Medicare rebates for GPs that stripped away billions.”

And there was a killer punchline that goes to the heart of Dutton’s MAGA-style sloganing.

“Remember that next time you hear the Liberals talk about getting ‘back on track’,” the PM said.

“Remember what they want to go back to. Remember the track they put Medicare on. The dead-end road to a system where every Australian paid more for less.”

On Monday, Albanese was quick to add that Dutton’s quick agreement over the Medicare spend was nothing more than a “thought bubble” and politicking.

He’s right on the politicking front, but the PM didn’t add that it was smart politicking on Dutton’s behalf.

Nor did he note that politicking is what this issue has so immediately boiled down to.

The politics of healthcare always provide plenty of fodder for an election campaign.

Health debate in the election about to be called, however, will be almost exclusively about who to believe and who to trust the system with.

Dutton was quick to say doctors shouldn’t trust the PM, and then he resorted to some pretty mundane politicking jabs: “Now, this is the worst government since 1931, and Anthony Albanese is the worst Prime Minister since 1931 and is completely out of his depth.”

That’s a boring line.

What’s not boring, though, is that Senate Estimates have revealed the Coalition will slash public service numbers in order to fund their Medicare spend.