The Grattan Institute’s latest report seems to, again, miss the point. Enduring reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) polices are achieving substantial savings for government and the Australian medicines industry is on the cusp of yet another; the biggest reform since 2007.

“Measures currently before the Parliament will generate as much as $6.6 billion in savings from a raft of changes to the PBS over the next 5 years that will significantly reduce medicines prices to government. As well as measures to speed up price disclosure price cuts for off-patent medicines, the government is also introducing additional price cuts for patented, innovative treatments when they have been on the PBS for five years ,“ Medicines Australia CEO, Tim James said.

The therapeutic group policy has become redundant in the current policy setting. Australia has very effective policy settings to ensure a sustainable PBS. The 1 October 2015 price disclosure reductions announced recently have average price cuts of just over 20% for around 70 drugs, in almost 230 dosages and presentations. This is on top of price cuts to over 100 PBS-listed medicines which took place on 1 April 2015.

For more details, go to: https://medicinesaustralia.com.au/media-release/grattan-institute-misses-the-point-again/