Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Ian Macdonald for his question. Prices paid by cancer patients for PBS medicines are not affected by this price reduction. Pharmacists and hospitals cannot charge patients extra for PBS medicines; in fact, consumers benefit from cheaper drugs as government savings are used to subsidise new cancer drugs on the PBS.

Since 2007 price disclosure on cancer drugs has saved taxpayers around $118 million. What will occur on 1 December is that the price the government pays for the cancer drug docetaxel will drop by 70 per cent, bringing the price the government pays into line with the market price. For many years pharmacists have been charging the government 20 to 75 per cent above the market price. These inflated prices have meant that the government has paid, in some instances, $2,800 above the market price for this drug.

Since 2007 the government has committed $1.3 billion to fund 30 new or amended cancer treatments on the PBS. We are putting more money into cancer treatments. Treatment options for over 15 different cancers such as leukaemia, breast cancer, prostate cancer, bone cancer, lung cancer and bowel cancer have all been expanded under this government. Cancer drug patients pay no more than one PBS copayment for the first prescription dispensed, with no additional copayment for repeated prescriptions: in other words, a patient will pay either $5.80 or $35.40 for the first injection or infusion of the drug but not for the repeats. In some instances, the average monthly cancer treatment costs are over $5,000, so you can see there has been a lot of misinformation about it. (Time expired)