Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Hansard source

The merits of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme have been well canvassed in this parliament. Since the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme was introduced in 1949, 61 years ago, it has provided subsidised access to clinically proven, cost-effective medicine. The PBS and the process for listing drugs enjoys in-principle bipartisan support. It is one of the pillars of our health system.

Prior to listing, drugs need to meet rigorous criteria to ensure that patients get access to important new treatments and taxpayers get value for money. We have the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and we have the Pharmaceutical Benefits Pricing Authority. A key challenge for successive governments has been to ensure that there is an incentive for research, development and listing of new medicines whilst ensuring that the health budget is sustainable into the future.

Australia currently spends about 9.1 per cent of GDP on health. That is about average for the OECD. It is significantly up on where it was 10 years ago but we are average in terms of our spending in the OECD. With that, we see that many of our measures for health put us in the top third of countries in the OECD. Particularly in areas like life expectancy at birth and life expectancy at 65, Australia is ranked third in the OECD. Only people in Japan and, for women, France and, for men, Iceland have longer life expectancies than Australians.

In 2008-09 there were 181 million prescriptions dispensed under the PBS. This is anticipated to grow to 232 million by 2013-14 alone.

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