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

I thank the member for McEwen for his question and his support of strengthening Medicare and making medicines cheaper. He knows that Australia has one of the best medicine systems in the world, one underpinned by the PBS—one of Labor's legacies that again was opposed tooth and nail by the Liberal Party at the time. The PBS ensures that Australians have access to the world's best treatment at affordable prices. Since we were elected only two-and-a-bit years ago, we've made more than 250 new and expanded listings on the PBS. This month, among a number of other medicines, we listed a new medicine, Vazkepa, to reduce the risk of repeat heart attacks or strokes for patients with high triglycerides. Around one in three people who survive a heart attack or a stroke will go on to have a repeat event within seven years. So often, that repeat event will be either deadly or, at the very least, very seriously disabling. This is the first treatment listed on the PBS for this group of patients. It will benefit more than 10,000 patients a year, we think. It will save lives. It will genuinely save many, many lives, and it will be available at those affordable PBS prices, instead of patients paying almost $2,000 a year.

We've been making those PBS prices even cheaper for all Australians. In our first three months we slashed the maximum amount that pensioners would pay for medicines across a given year by 25 per cent. The final budget outcome that the Treasurer released last month revealed that that measure alone delivered pensioners 22 million free scripts last year that would otherwise not have been delivered. That's 22 million free scripts saving pensioners about $170 million just in one year. Last year we also delivered general patients, not concessional patients but general patients, the biggest cuts to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS. These measures, along with 60-day scripts and all those additional listings on the PBS, have saved Australians hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, making a real difference to Australian households.

But we know household budgets are still under real pressure and that we have to do more, which is why, in this year's budget, we also announced that we would be freezing the price of PBS medicines next year for up to five years, saving patients another $500 million. What we also know is that that is all under threat from a shadow Treasurer who has said very openly that he doesn't support any of our additional investments in bulk-billing, in urgent care clinics and in cheaper medicines. That is the clear choice for Australians: cheaper medicines and cost-of-living relief or those opposite.

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