The prime minister has guaranteed the future of the pharmaceutical benefits scheme in the face of pressure from American medical giants for the us to impose tariffs on Australian medicines.it comes as the government announces it'll make medicines cheaper from 2026.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00So the announcement is that medicines will be capped at $25 per script if they're on
00:07the PBS from 2026 next year, from the 1st of January, and that is the cheapest that
00:14medicines have been, according to the government, since 2004.
00:18Now this is a cut from the $31.60 that they are at the moment.
00:23It's something that the government says is going to save Australians $200 million a year
00:29and it will cost the Australian taxpayer $690 million over the next four years, and those
00:36details will be made clearer in the budget when it's released on Tuesday.
00:42Labor says this will come into place from next year and the Coalition already has said
00:48that they will match that.
00:50So no matter who wins government, there will be $25 medicines on the PBS from the 1st of
00:57January.
00:58What's the Prime Minister said about these threats from the US pharmaceutical lobby,
01:02Isabel?
01:03Well, he's been very insistent that the pharmaceutical benefit scheme is not up for sale.
01:10What's happened is US lobby groups for the pharmacy industry there have written to the
01:16trade representative in the US, Jamison Greer, who's been doing trade negotiations with Australia
01:21and he has called the PBS egregious.
01:25The reason they don't like it is because, in their view, it devalues American medicines
01:30because the Australian government is paying a set fee for American medicines, doing a
01:36deal with them essentially so that Australians are able to have the benefits that we have.
01:42The US pharmacy groups say that that's not fair and so they are urging Donald Trump to
01:48place reciprocal tariffs on Australia as some sort of punishment.
01:53Both the government and the coalition have been insistent that Donald Trump can't actually
01:58affect the actual pharmaceutical benefit scheme.
02:01We heard from Anthony Albanese on this just a short time ago.
02:05We'll stand our ground.
02:08This is not for sale and is not up for negotiation.
02:12This is a part of the free trade agreement because Labor insisted as a condition of our
02:19support for the free trade agreement.
02:21So the pharmaceutical benefit scheme is a part of who we are as Australians and we will
02:28always stand up for it.
02:30It's not up for negotiation.
02:34The coalition has said the same.
02:36So what is the concern is these potential tariffs that the US has suggested it would
02:42place on pharmaceutical exports from Australia as well as beef exports from Australia and
02:48we are still waiting to hear what the US decides to do with those.