The new total Medicare payment is a combination of the bulk billing incentive and the Bulk Billing Incentive Program. The bulk billing incentive is a conditional payment, made on top of the regular Medicare rebate, to general practice (GP) for bulk billing certain patients. An expansion of the bulk billing incentive to cover non-concession patients is being introduced by the Australian Government from 1 November 2025. This expansion is stated to result in the number of fully bulk billing GP clinics increasing to 4,800 nationwide. 

This report considers the impact of this expansion, analysing how many GP clinics are likely to become fully bulk billing from 1 November 2025 – using data on exactly how much every single GP clinic currently charges adults for their basic services.

While the report shows the expansion will result in more bulk billing clinics, the effect of the expansion would need to be between 20% and 30% greater than the published new total Medicare payment for it to make economic sense for 4,800 clinics to become fully bulk billing.

The report outlines the findings and is split into four parts.

• Part 1 provides an overview of how the bulk billing incentive expansion works in practice.
• Part 2 provides a straight comparison of the latest pricing data to the new total Medicare payment to estimate the number of fully bulk billing clinics from 1 November 2025.
• Part 3 provides a staged comparison to account for external factors impacting individual clinic billing decisions.
• Part 4 summarises findings from this analysis.