Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm participating again in the Youth Voice to Parliament campaign, championed by Ash, Gemma and the team at Raise Our Voice.

Today's submission is from Zara Freeman, a 14-year-old constituent from Cunningham. These are her words:

My name is Zara, I'm 14 years old, and I live in the Cunningham electorate. The issue I'm delivering to you today is how children's Medicare bulk-billing is not being utilised to help families. Currently, the top pages of search engines say that Medicare bulk-billing completely covers GP visits, paediatrics, dental work and immunisations for children under 16. But, in reality, these services are guilty of not bulk-billing like is claimed. A basic general practitioner's out-of-pocket gap is up to $40—$40 more than is claimed and $40 more than it should be.

The federal budget for 2023 intended to address this issue by tripling bulk-billing for children, but this has still not solved the problem. There's a direct demonstration that incentivising does not work to combat children's Medicare costs. Instead, we need to penalise for not doing it. That means that free, equal health care would be available for all children when they need it, not just when the budget allows. Through introducing financial penalties for not bulk-billing children's visits, it means that Medicare is utilised so that struggling families aren't affected by absurd out-of-pocket costs, reducing future financial and health burdens on the current youth.

Thank you to Zara.

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