They say you should never kick a person when they’re down. However, this seems to carry no weight when the person down is an entire profession of GPs.

The Federal Government, after freezing Medicare rebates for several years, ended it with a miserly $1 increase in rebates alongside a reduction in bulk-billing incentives in my locality.

For GPs in my area — on the Central Coast, NSW — it meant a net deficit when bulk-billing compared with years gone by.

It has resulted in a massive shift away from bulk-billing as GPs are no longer willing to pick up the tab for years of underinvestment in primary care.