FREE MEDICINE SCHEME
Drastic Modification Proposed Federal Labour Caucus Rec. 8 p.m. CANBERRA, Oct. 14. The Federal Labour caucus has proposed a drastic modification of the free medicine scheme which the Minister of Health. Senator, H. E. McKenna, has promised to examine. The new proposal is that the Government pay only for uncompounded lifesaving drugs, including penicillin, sulpha drugs, and insulin. Under the present scheme the Government undertakes to pay for all prescriptions providing they conform td the Government formulary and are entered according to the regulations. The 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-operating voluntarily in the amended scheme. By confining the scheme to specified drugs the Government would abandon about half its formulary and reduce the cost of the fully-operative scheme to about £2,000,000 annually, thus saving about £1,000.000.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT19491015.2.97
Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 27212, 15 October 1949, Page 7
Word Count
151FREE MEDICINE SCHEME Otago Daily Times, Issue 27212, 15 October 1949, Page 7
Using This Item
Allied Press Ltd is the copyright owner for the Otago Daily Times. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons New Zealand BY-NC-SA licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Allied Press Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.