THE federal government’s crusade against smoking will continue into the new year with more nicotine-replacement drugs listed for subsidy on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
From Sunday, two new lower-strength nicotine patches, of 14 and 7 milligrams, will be part-funded by the government. Higher-strength patches are already listed on the scheme, the register of medicines subsidised by the government to make them affordable for patients.
A drug to combat blood clotting in hip and knee replacement patients, a treatment for blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs, and a higher strength of a common HIV treatment drug will also being added to the scheme.
The Health Minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the new, lower-strength patches would allow clinicians to tail off a patient’s nicotine intake slowly.
“The listing of nicotine patches on the PBS has cut the price of patches down to just $5.80 a month for concessional patients or $35.40 a month for general patients,” Ms Plibersek said.
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The new drug listings will be revenue-neutral, a spokesman for the minister said, but overall the scheme will account for nearly $10 billion of revenue in the 2011-12 budget year.
In February the government refused to add to the scheme a number of drugs, contrary to the recommendations of its independent expert panel, the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Advisory Committee.
The deferrals, which were made due to ”fiscal circumstances”, were reversed this month and the government has agreed to abide by the recommendations of the committee for at least a year, but only where they pertain to drugs costing under $10 million a year.
The opposition health spokesman, Peter Dutton, challenged the Health Minister to guarantee all recommended drugs would be listed on the scheme.
”The issue is not what the Gillard government lists, but what it withholds,” he said.
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”I can’t understand why the government makes people suffer unnecessarily when the cost efficiency of listing a medicine has been independently verified.”
The cost of all government-subsidised drugs will rise on Sunday, in line with rises in the consumer price index.
At present the co-payment consumers make to subsidised medicines is $34.20, which will rise to $35.40. Pensioners and people on forms of welfare pay a concessional rate that will increase from $5.60 to $5.80.
The higher strength nicotine patches are projected to cost $40 million over four years, and since their listing in February, more than 125,000 people have bought them, at a cost to the public purse of $8.9 million.
The subsidy of nicotine patches comes after a year of all-out war between the government and the tobacco industry following the introduction of plain packaging legislation.
Ms Plibersek’s predecessor, Nicola Roxon, was accused of presiding over a nanny state after the legislation, which bans all company logos and requires all smoking products to be in regulation olive-green packaging, was passed in November.
An alliance of tobacco companies filed a High Court challenge to the law. The case is scheduled for a three-day hearing in April.