The polls are finally showing what FiftyUp Club members have been saying for several weeks.

A Newspoll in The Australian on Monday revealed that more people rank health and Medicare as “very important” in this election than any other issue.

Take our Healthcare costs survey No wonder both sides have spent the week fighting for your votes amidst claim and counter-claim about everything from bulk billing to the cost of medicines.

It’s a key area of concern for FiftyUps and Labor leader Bill Shorten, who is polling well on health, has gone so far as to call the election ‘a referendum on health care’ .

With both sides making promises PM Malcolm Turnbull is lagging in the latest opinion poll in Tuesday’s The Australian assessing the two leaders’ capability on this issue.

At stake are complex policy positions involving billions of dollars around the impact of the freeze of Medicare rebates to GPs and changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme on ordinary patients.

And the billions of dollars to spend or save are being tossed around in the fight.

For example Labor’s promise to restore the indexation of the Medicare Benefits Schedule will cost $2.4 billion over four years- the most pricey commitment of the campaign so far.

The threat, which voters were primed to react to, was that visits to the GP might be charged at around $20 if the freeze continued.

But Health Minister Sussan Ley, who attracted flak after suggesting  she wanted to lift the freeze but wasn’t allowed to by Treasury, puts the loss at merely 60 cents per consultation.

Also in contention are the rates of bulk billing. The Liberals claim since they’ve been in office more patients are availing themselves of the system to avoid any direct patient payment to doctors.

It maybe so but the threat of various proposed co-payments which have been on ice or dumped since the 2014 Budget mean any change to the Medicare system is fraught with risk.

Hence Labor has pledged to block a planned co-payment patients would make under the PBS on subsidised prescriptions of $5 for general patients and 80c for those on concessions. The cost is $1 billion over four years.

But Turnbull has argued the money from the co-payment will deliver new life-saving medicines to be covered under the PBS and nominated treatments for breast cancer, melanoma and diabetes.

The pundits say it’s to Shorten’s advantage to keep the debate around health, protecting Medicare and ‘putting people first.’ While Turnbull needs to move the focus more to his more highly-rated credentials on economic management and just who and how the promises are to be paid for.

CLICK HERE to take our Healthcare Costs Survey and tell the pollies what’s important to you

CLICK HERE  to read the FiftyUp Club’s Election Distiller