The federal government appears to have backed away from plans to outsource the building of a new IT system and the associated processing of claims for Medicare payments, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday proclaiming that “every element” of Medicare that is currently in government hands will remain so.

The government first announced it was investigating the outsourcing of Medicare payments in the 2014-15 budget, allocating half a million dollars to investigating a commercially integrated health payment system and in August that year calling for expressions of interest to identify “potential alternative approaches to the delivery of health payments”.