A better drug deal for Australians

A new Grattan Institute report, ‘Cutting a better drug deal’, has found Australians are paying more than $500 million a year too much for their prescription drugs. The report shows that Australians are paying more than twice the price for drugs than in the UK and more than three times the amount than New Zealand.

The report suggests that taxpayers and patients would pay less if the federal government made some simple changes to the way prices are set under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

Australians on average pay five times the best international price for a group of seven commonly prescribed drugs. The price of the cholesterol medicine atorvastatin (Lipitor), the most prescribed drug in Australia, is about 1.5 times the best international price. In Australia, a box of 30 1mg tables of the breast cancer drug anastrozole (Arimidex) costs $19.20. In the UK it is just $2.45.

Apart from the economic burden, the high price of drugs has a negative impact on health. In the past 12 months about 8% of Australians didn’t get, or deferred getting, prescribed drugs because they couldn’t afford them.

According to the report, the Commonwealth Government is overpaying for generic medicines that are no longer covered by patents. Drug companies are already forced to reveal how much pharmacies actually pay for generic medicines and the government reduces the amount it pays to pharmacies for each drug accordingly. But, the report warns, this policy is working too slowly.

The results indicate that if the government were to benchmark the prices of generic drugs in Australia against prices paid overseas, $93 million a year would be saved, cutting the price of 16 commonly prescribed drugs in Australia by an average of $6.43 per pack.

Cutting a better drug deal reveals that Australia is buying and pricing its drugs the wrong way and fixing this policy would give patients a better deal and improve the budget bottom line.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Maksym Yemelyanov