FREE MEDICINE IN AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25935, 15 October 1949, Page 7

FREE MEDICINE IN AUSTRALIA

MODIFIED SCHEME PROPOSED LIFE-SAVING DRUGS COVERED (Rec. 7 p.m.) CANBERRA. October 14. The Australian Labour Party caucus has proposed a drastic modificalion of the free medicine scheme which the Minister of Health (Senator N. E. McKenna) has promised to examine. The new proposal is that the Government should pay only for uncompounded life-saving drugs, including penicillin, sulpha drugs, and insulin. Under the present scheme the Government undertakes to pay for all prescriptions, providing they conform to the Government formulary and are entered according to the regulations. Caucus made the new proposal because the High Court last week invalidated certain sections of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Act. The Government may now rely on doctors co-opcrating voluntarily in the amended scheme. confining the scheme to specified drugs, the Government would abandon about half the formulary, and reduce the cost of a fullv operative scheme to about £2,000.909 a year, thus saving about £1.000,000. CO-OPERATION OF DOCTORS SCHEME SUBMITTED IN 1947 (Rec. 11 p.m.) CANBERRA. Oct. 14. The secretary of the British Medical Association in Australia, Dr. J. G. Hunter, said to-day that doctors will co-operate in a modified free medical scheme if they may write prescriptions on their own forms. Commenting on the amended scheme proposed by the Labour caucus, he said that his association had submitted that proposal to the Minister of Health (Senator N. E. McKenna) at the first conference on free medicine in 1947, and that doctors would co-operate, mainly because of the costliness of life-saving drugs.