Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

You'd think they would've learned about interjecting on the member for Kooyong, but this is an opposition that doesn't appear to learn. I thank the member for Kooyong for her question, and I appreciate the contribution that members on the crossbench, particularly those with such long experience as health professionals, are making to a really difficult debate about health care right now.

It has never been harder to see a doctor. It has never been more expensive to see a doctor, and at a time of severe cost-of-living pressures just those basic questions about whether you can take a script to your pharmacist and have it filled or whether that will place too much of a burden on your household budget are real pressures on hundreds of thousands of Australians. We've heard from the ABS that almost a million Australians every year either defer or go without a script that their doctor has given them as important for their health because of household budget pressures. On 1 January, for the first time in 75 years, there was a substantial cut to the price of general patient scripts, down from $42.50 to $30, and already that has saved tens of millions dollars for many Australians. It's made a real difference not only to their household budget but, importantly, to their health care as well.

The member for Kooyong is right: the PBAC has made other suggestions about ways in which that cost-of-living pressure and also the convenience of patients can be improved—in which pressures can be alleviated, including the number of times they need to go to GPs, get scripts or go to the pharmacist to have their medicines topped up. Obviously, we're looking at all of those options. There's a budget process underway. We're looking at all of the options available to government to make access to health care better and easier for patients, and to make the cost of health care, including the cost of medicines, even cheaper.

I'm not in a position to make any particular announcements this afternoon, but I thank the member for Kooyong for her question. These are all matters that we take very seriously. We know, in spite of the fact we only introduced the change on 1 January, it has already had an enormously beneficial impact on patients. It's a change that was supported very strongly by the community pharmacy sector. There is much more that we can do, and we're examining all of those options very closely.

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