this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Does Australia not have public health care?
Specialist fees (and nowadays a lot of GP fees for that matter) are not fully covered by the Medicare rebate. Typically you'll pay about $300 for an standard consultation appointment and get not quite half of that back.
Shoot, was it more comprehensive coverage before?
GP fees have increased steadily over the last decade but the previous conservative Liberal/National coalition government froze the Medicare rebate in 2014 to try to force more of a user-pays system into place, which led more and more practices to stop bulk billing (only charging the rebate amount, meaning no cost to the patient). The current Labor government (ostensibly centre-left but arguably more centre-right now) has increased the rebate, but it hasn't been enough to significantly reverse the trend yet. Specialist fees have always had an out of pocket cost in my adult lifetime (15-20 years).