Medical
For many Australians, the cost of seeing a doctor has become too high. Pixabay

Australia's healthcare system has experienced a notable shift over the past year, with the average out-of-pocket cost for a GP visit rising 4.1% to AU$43.38, while bulk billing, which requires no payment from patients, continues to decline.

According to the latest data from Cleanbill, a healthcare directory, the national bulk billing rate fell to 20.7% at the beginning of 2025, which is a sharp drop from 35.7% just two years earlier and 24.2% in 2024.

GPs, like veteran doctor Dr. Sabrina Saldanha from Sydney, have been forced to stop offering bulk billing due to rising operating costs and the complexity of medical services. Dr. Saldanha, who ran her practice for over 30 years, decided to remove bulk billing entirely last year, citing financial constrains.

"One factor is the cost and the other really is the complexity of medicine; the amount of energy, time, effort, knowledge base, research that goes into every consultation has increased because of the changes in medicine over the years," Dr Saldanha told AAP. "Patients are very time poor and that basically means they want to fit far more into their consultation."

Rising costs drive patients away from healthcare

A report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that 8.8% of Australians in 2023-2024 delayed or avoided seeing a GP due to cost, up from 7% in 2022-23, reported ABC News.

Healthcare costs are becoming harder to bear, especially in Tasmania (AU$54.26), the ACT (AU$51.84), and NSW (AU$44.05), where out-of-pocket GP visit fees are among the highest in the country.

For many Australians, the cost of seeing a doctor is simply too high. Allan Wembridge, a 69-year-old from Curlwaa, New South Wales, knows this all too well.

After suffering from chronic pain due to a cattle station accident and two separate injuries from a helicopter crash, Wembridge is unable to afford the healthcare he needs. The cost of a doctor's visit, combined with fuel and living expenses, is around AU$60, making it difficult for him to seek the care he requires. As a result, he has not seen a doctor in over a year.

"The data is absolutely concerning, but it's not particularly surprising ... anyone who's gone to see a GP in recent years knows how few bulk billing clinics remain and how high out-of-pocket costs can be," Cleanbill founder James Gillespie pointed out.

Dr. Saldanha observed that wealthier patients were more likely to maintain routine GP follow-ups, worsening health inequality. Meanwhile, those switching to bulk billing centers faced lower care quality and lacked consistent care from their own GP, she added.

Government intervention: Is it enough?

In November 2023, the government tripled the bulk billing incentive for GPs, and the data shows that the investment has had some positive effects, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler claimed. By November 2024, 77.2% of all GP visits were bulk-billed, an increase of 1.6 percentage points from October 2023, before the investment took effect.

"After we tripled the bulk billing incentive for GPs, bulk billing has started rising again in every state and territory — delivering an additional 5.8 million free visits to the GP in just 13 months," Butler said.

However, Gillespie points out that while these measures may have slowed the decline in bulk billing, they have not been enough to keep pace with the rising costs of healthcare. In particular, the gap between government incentives and the increasing costs of insurance, payroll tax, and government regulations continues to grow.