Medicare’s expert advice service seems to have declared GP co-operatives, which charge membership fees while offering bulk-billed consults, are breaking the law, despite their continued expansion.

Many GPs have raised questions about the rise of co-operatives – not-for-profit outfits like National Health Co-op, which charge patient membership fees in return for universal bulk-billing.

They have been accused of breaching section 20A of the Health Insurance Act 1973 designed to prohibit doctors levying fees on bulk billed services.

Now it appears as though the AskMBS hotline agrees, after telling one Canberra GP that practices should “not establish a business model where access to bulk-billed services is contingent on the payment of any fee, whether described as a co-operative membership fee or otherwise”.