The Coalition should immediately axe its controversial Medicare rebate freeze extension if it is returned to government, doctors and health experts have said.
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Dr Michael Gannon, the national president of the Australian Medical Association, said the freeze had always been bad policy and the election outcome proved it was bad politics as well.
The University of Canberra's Professor Laurie Brown, an expert on public health policy, said the electorate had been correct in interpreting the freeze as a "co-payment by stealth" and an attack on free access to medical services.
Professor Steven Robson, the president of the ACT AMA, said the poll highlighted the importance of access of healthcare to the community.
"When you have these groundless scare campaigns being run it just makes governments of either side afraid to undertake things that will unequivocally be beneficial [such as overhauling the Medicare rebate payment system]," he said.
"The scare campaign was diabolically bad. I thought it was extremely bad. It was such a stupid thing to do."
Dr Gannon agreed: "The rebate freeze and the inferiority of the Coalition incentives for bulk billing of pathology and radiology gave fertile ground for the scare campaign. It only took hold because people genuinely feared their access to basic healthcare might have been threatened."
The AMA recognised the need to bring the budget back into surplus and understood health sector savings would be needed to achieve this.
"[But] we don't think general practice is the biggest problem. It remains cheap compared to hospital medicine and it is cost effective in terms of its focus on prevention. It would be good policy and good politics [to drop the rebate freeze extension]," Dr Gannon said.
Professor Brown said her advice to Mr Turnbull, in the event he was able to form a government, would be to walk away from the freeze rather than risk having the budget defeated.
"The Australian public see health and education as public goods. People invest the government with responsibility for achieving the best outcomes. They don't want to be at the mercy of the private sector," she said.
"The policy of putting the co-payment onto doctor visits was cost shifting away from the government to the patient. I think the general public could accept that as some form of privatisation."
Professor Brown said the election outcome was more a case of the public smelling a rat than being conned by a Labor lie.
That said, the investigation into the IT infrastructure behind the Medicare payment system was appropriate and possibly desirable.
"We are now in era of digital governance and the IT infrastructure of running Medicare and some of the other Centrelink-type payments probably justifiably does need to be investigated and updated. It could be, going down that line, that aspect could very well be privatised and outsourced," she said.
The investigation had played into pre-existing concerns over the Coalition's commitment to Medicare however.
"Talk around that just added to the public response to the 2014 budget, the GP co-payment [proposal] and the continued freeze on indexing the Medicare rebate.
"[The Coalition] misjudged how people were going to respond on some of those issues."
The New Zealand-born academic had some very specific advice for the Coalition if it was returned.
"Look, you've got two responsibilities. One is to try to promote economic prosperity and two, to promote social prosperity. In the case of Medicare the Australian voters want the Australian government to take responsibility for ensuring equitable access for everybody to doctor services. You need to put aside some of your economic imperatives for the social good."
