Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How is the Albanese Labor government's cheaper medicine policy making health care more affordable? Why is this important, and how is it helping to change the lives of Australians? How have the pressures on costs of medicines changed over time?

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

I thank my friend the member for Makin, who has proudly served his community for more than three decades in the north-eastern suburbs of Adelaide—first as mayor and then, for a long time, in this place. He's been a relentless advocate for better healthcare services in the areas that he serves.

Like the rest of us, the member campaigned very hard at the last election on our promise to make medicines cheaper, and we're delivering on that promise by listing more lifesaving, life-changing medicines on the PBS and by cutting the script prices for millions and millions of patients.

Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of joining three extraordinary young Australians and their parents: Oscar, who's 10 and, the Deputy Prime Minister will be pleased to hear, a fierce Geelong Football Club supporter; Ari, who's 12; and three-year-old Kira from the Sunshine Coast. All three of these kids have achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism. The 140 kids born with this condition every year are 50 times more likely than other babies not to live beyond five years of age. And if they do survive, they'll likely have to endure multiple major surgeries and live for years with pain and disability.

Yesterday, we celebrated the PBS listing of an extraordinary new drug, Voxzogo—a treatment that was proven through global clinical trials led by the researchers at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute down in Melbourne. This drug is going to transform the lives of all of these kids. Without the PBS listing though, the drug that they'll have to take from early infancy up until the time their growth plates close at 16 or 18, would cost $330,000 every single year. Under the PBS, it will cost just $30 a script.

We're also committed to cutting the price of PBS scripts for patients. I've said this a couple of times in this place, but on 1 January we delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS. In the budget, we announced that we've also accepted advice from the experts in the PBS to allow patients to access up to 60 days supply of common medicines for chronic disease. This will halve the cost of those medicines for six million patients, which is why our decision has been supported by a long, long list of patient groups. It will also halve the number of routine visits to GPs to get a repeat script, freeing up millions of GP consults every year for other patients, which, again, is why our decision has been supported by every single doctors group in this country.

We will reinvest every single dollar the Commonwealth saves from this change back into community pharmacy, but this government is deeply committed to delivering cheaper and cheaper medicines for Australians. It's good for their hip pocket and it's also good for their health.