Last year taxpayers spent A$6.3 billion on GP services through Medicare, about 6% of the total government health expenditure.

The authors of the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) program published in the Conversation their assessment of whether this represented good value for money.

Their conclusion, as outlined in the infographic above, is that

We get the best bang for our buck from General Practice.
Discouraging GP visits would increase overall health costs

This supports our calculation that

The cost of one admission to a public hospital is more than the cost of 15 years worth of GP consultations

It is cheaper to pay for someone to see their GP every week for a year then it is to pay for them to be admitted to hospital for just one day.