The fact 32,000 Canberrans have each paid $130 to join a bulk-billing medical co-operative since 2010 suggests the historical reluctance of general practitioners in the ACT to bulk bill may be on the nose with the public.
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When more than 8 per cent of the population is willing to stump up a $30 joining fee plus an annual $100 membership fee for a practice billing model that is freely available elsewhere it would seem at least some feel they may have been being taken for a ride.
The ACT's disappointing record on bulk billing, which was as low as 37 percent of all GP visits in the early noughties and only recently reached 57 per cent, is the product of market economics.
Canberra has always been under-supplied with doctors and is still about 100 short according to Adrian White, the manager of the National Health Co-op which runs seven bulk-billing clinics across the Territory.
With demand having always exceeded supply, there has been little incentive for established practitioners to walk away from the demonstrably more lucrative co-payment model. As a result, Canberra's 2014/2015 bulk billing rate was 26 per cent below the national rate of 83 per cent.
This has created a social laboratory in which the Coalition's 2014 assertion that introducing a universal co-payment would reduce the number of visits people make to the doctor can be tested.
In western Sydney, where 96.3 per cent of GP attendances were bulk-billed, individuals visited their doctor on average 7.6 times in 2013/2014.
In the ACT, where only 57.1 per cent of visits were bulk-billed, individuals visited the doctor 4.5 times in 2013/2014. This was the third lowest visitation rate of any primary health network area in the country.
Only the Northern Territory [3.6 visits] and Country Western Australia [4.1 visits] fared worse for what, it seems reasonable to assume, would be geographic and social reasons.
Those issues do not apply here and, on the face of it, you would expect the average Canberran to visit the doctor at about the same rate as the average Sydneysider or Melburnian.
A closer analysis of the correlation between bulk-billing rates and the frequency of GP attendances across the ACT is even more revealing.
Five of the National Health Co-op's seven clinics are in Belconnen. Almost 66 per cent of all GP attendances in the suburb in 2013/2014 were bulk-billed, the highest rate in the ACT.
This translated into a slightly-above-average [for Canberra] 4.7 GP visits per person.
Tuggeranong, with the highest number of GP visits per person in 2013/2014 at 4.8, came in second highest on the proportion of bulk-billed attendances at 60.2 per cent.
Given the role the modern GP plays in preventative medicine, the most cost-effective form of health care, our low attendance rate is no good thing.
There is a strong case to be made that lifting the cap on Medicare rebates will grow bulk-billing further and, in turn, encourage Canberrans to have a potentially life-changing health chat with their GP more frequently.
