Medicare is a key election battleground for the Coalition and Labor.
Mr Frydenberg's claim checks out. Bulk billing rates for general practitioners have increased by 4 percentage points since Labor was in government, despite a freeze on their rebates in 2013-14 and since July 2015. Specialist bulk billing rates have also increased over that time, despite a longer freeze on their rebates. But experts told Fact Check it was not possible to know why bulk billing rates had increased in spite of the freezes on rebates. They say a range of factors could have increased bulk billing, including that the freeze on GP rebates had not been in place long enough to affect bulk billing rates and that doctors were absorbing rising practice costs themselves instead of passing them on to patients. An increase in ageing patients on pensions who were more likely to be bulk billed could also have contributed to the increase.
Fact check: Have bulk billing rates increased under the Coalition?
['Coalition_(Australia)', 'Australian_Labor_Party']