22 May 2016 - Coalition and Labor trade blows over PBS.

Political campaigning has focused on Labor’s promise to make medicine on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme cheaper, while the Coalition has trumpeted its record listing new drugs on the scheme.

On Sunday Labor announced it would spend $3.6bn over 10 years to scrap proposed prescription medicine co-payments. Under the government’s plan, blocked by the Senate, patients would pay a $5 co-payment and concession patients would pay an extra 80 cents on each prescription.

In Melbourne the health minister, Sussan Ley, announced a $7m policy to encourage clinical cancer trials for young people, including recruiting young people and examining age restrictions on trials.

Ley criticised Labor’s announcement, saying she saw only poorly targeted increases in spending that did not contain “a plan for listing medicines at all”.

She praised the Coalition’s policy to list all medicines costing a total of $20m or more recommended by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme advisory board, saying listing cancer drugs saved patients tens of thousands of dollars.

But Labor has claimed Ley was at odds with the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, about whether it would reconsider the medicine co-payment.

Ley said: “We will look at the policies after the election and I certainly recognise that, in the medicine space, there are difficult decisions to make about the payments for medicines. But I also recognise that those decisions are in the interests of Australian patients.”

For more details, go to: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/22/election-2016-major-parties-clash-over-health-as-nick-xenophon-vows-to-swap-the-votes