To many, the official GP bulk-billing rate (currently 88.8% of all GP services) is a heavily politicised fetish — regularly trotted out by governments to show that Medicare is working under their management.

But in recent times, especially during the cold, dark years of the big Medicare freeze, there were strenuous efforts, particularly by the RACGP, to show that the rate wasn’t quite what it seemed: that substantial numbers of patients were facing out-of-pocket costs.

One figure the college liked to quote was that, based on Medicare data, only two-thirds of patients were bulk-billed for every GP service over the course of a year.

This was sometimes requoted in the media; but then you could argue that the number, which obviously lumps together patients who are bulk-billed 99% of the time with those who are never bulk-billed, carries a little political spin of its own.