![]() The Senate now has a choice over the next 24 hours: either allow access to cheaper medicines for six million Australians, as recommended by the medicines experts, as supported by every patient and doctor group, or really accept the position of the Coalition and the pharmacy lobby, that cheaper medicines should not be proceeded with in this country. This Disallowance Motion needs to be dealt with quickly, because the Parliament rises tomorrow, and access to cheaper medicines, if it is not disallowed by the Senate, will start to take effect before the Parliament resumes. A Disallowance Motion that was lodged by Senator Ruston and Senator McKenzie on behalf of the Coalition, the One Nation Senators and also the new independent Senator, Senator David Van. Now, a little while ago, a motion in the Senate was tabled to block this measure - to block access for six million Australians to cheaper medicines. All of those reasons are why this has been supported by every significant patient group in the country and every doctors’ group as well. ![]() And it frees up millions of GP consults that we desperately need for important health conditions, rather than just routine scripts being issued by doctors. ![]() Now, this is good for the hip pocket, obviously, it halves the cost of these medicines for patients, but it's also good for health. And as a result, patients with ongoing health conditions have paid literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in fees that they shouldn't have had to pay, if the advice of medicine experts had been accepted. But after a discussion with the pharmacy lobby, the former government decided not to proceed with that. This was advice given to the former government around five years ago. That's why so many countries to which we usually compare ourselves allow 60 or even 90-day prescriptions. That's not what patients tend to experience today, they are often on these medicines for many, many years. 30-day scripts make a lot of sense for the old patient profile, which used to be a single bout of infectious disease, a single episode of care, that required a single course of medicine. More than 300 medicines that people are often on not just for years, or even decades, they're often on for the entire rest of their lives. That would be through accepting advice from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee to allow doctors to issue 60-day prescriptions for common ongoing health conditions. ![]() MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: More than three months ago now I announced the latest wave in our Government's commitment to deliver cheaper medicines. ![]()
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