Butler: Wait and See
Wednesday, October 04, 2023
Health Minister Mark Butler’s office has responded to our director Stephen Page’s request to provide Medicare for surrogacy, with a wait and see response.
Stephen had again written to Butler to try and have the exclusion in Medicare for surrogacy removed. Surrogacy was excluded from Medicare benefits in 1991 (when surrogacy was illegal across Australia). While surrogacy has long been legalised across Australia, this exclusion has remained, making the process of becoming parents through surrogacy in Australia more expensive and stressful. The cost to the taxpayer of removing the exclusion is about $1 million a year, against a Commonwealth reproductive health budget of $2.5 billion a year.
