This bill, the National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025, reflects really a key belief of mine, which is the importance of making health care more affordable and accessible to our society as a whole, and I thank the minister for his work on bringing this before the House.
It's very important to see this as being part of the DNA of a Labor government. This goes back many generations, even to the time of the first Labor prime minister, Andrew Watson, who believed that a healthy society was a successful society. Further, it can be seen in some of the very strong Labour governments in other countries, such as the government in which health minister Nye Bevan in Great Britain developed the first British comprehensive public health system now known as the National Health Service. He was instrumental in imparting the view that a healthy society was a successful society both socially and economically. The Curtin and then Chifley governments continued this in Australia, with the development of our public health system, our public hospital system and, of course, what became the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—which was a reflection of the cost of medicines and its effect on everyday families—as a way of making sure that working-class families could access the health care and the medicines that they needed.
Health care has changed a lot since that time. It was said in the days of the Labor governments of the Chifley-Curtin era that it was all about the bug, the drug and the mug. People had an acute illness, usually infective; they sought the medication that could help them; and then it was about the person's individual health. 'The bug, the drug and the mug' was an aspect of our health care for many decades. Even in my own time as a doctor, infectious disease was a very important part of health care, and it was very important to make sure people could access the medications they needed. Labor, throughout the generations, has protected the PBS up until the present day.
But we now live in a different time. We live in a time of chronic illness. About 60 per cent of Australians, or a bit more, have a chronic illness. Of that 60-odd per cent of the Australian population that have a chronic illness, about 85 per cent require daily medication on a long-term basis. That's a very important figure when we look at the larger numbers of Australians, our ageing population and the new developments in medicine. I myself take a long-term medication. It's actually one of the most commonly prescribed medications in Australia and in the developed world: a statin to reduce cholesterol, which reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, which used to be seen in my family as the family disease. We now know there are very effective ways of managing it and preventing cardiovascular events like stroke or heart attack by the use of things like statins and the treatment of blood pressure, and the treatment of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including diabetes. So we are in the age of chronic illness, and medication costs increasingly have an effect on the family budget that can be extremely significant.
We're also in an age when many of the chronic genetically based illnesses that were previously untreatable are now treatable. For example, as a paediatrician, we now have treatments for things like cystic fibrosis that are genetically targeted and are incredibly effective. The life span of someone with the common form of cystic fibrosis, due to what's called the delta F508 mutation, has almost doubled from early 20s to now over 50. We look forward to it being much, much higher as the effects of the new medications come into effect. These medications can be very expensive, ranging in cost from $200,000 to $300,000 a year per patient every year that they're alive. These are very expensive medications. They now can be accessed, thanks to a Labor government, at a cost that will be, from 1 November, $25, or $7.80 for a pensioner. These are incredible advances in health care that are supported by government action that reduces the cost of these medications to the families.
When we first came into government in 2022, we began, of course, by introducing the largest cut to the cost medicines in the PBS's history when we dropped the cap on PBS medicines from $42 to $30. Now, with this bill, we're going to further reduce the PBS general patient co-payment down to $25, and this will make a huge difference to the many families who have children and adults on long-term medication. With this bill, this is now the biggest cut to the cost of medicine in PBS history. It will save patients over $200 million every year, with four out of five PBS medicines to become cheaper because of the almost $700 million investment by this government. Pensioners and concession card holders will continue to benefit from the freeze to the cost of their PBS medicines, with the cost frozen at its current level of $7.70 until 2030. This is a huge saving for families.
I'd also like to add that this will go one step further and help save lives, as we know that patients that forgo their medication only ever do so if they can't afford it. This makes this bill even more important to me and my electorate. I decided to run for parliament in 2016 because I was sick and tired of my patients in the community being sick and tired—exactly that. I was sick of patients—or their mothers, usually, and their fathers—coming to me and asking me which part of the number of prescription medicines they should get first, because they couldn't afford to get them all. If, for example, you have a child with something like asthma, it is maybe two or three medications that they need, including the regular preventer medication. These changes are what good government does. It's important to know that our healthcare needs are changing, and this is a Labor government that's prepared to do what is important for families, No. 1, to keep them healthy and, No. 2, to make sure they can afford the cost of their medication.
The Australian Labor Party is consistent in our beliefs and our ability to implement strong healthcare policies to improve the outcomes for all Australians. We govern for all Australians. It's a matter of equity, it's Labor's way and it's something I'm very proud to be part of. I thank the minister and I thank the assistant ministers for all their efforts in bringing this bill to the parliament. It is very important. It's something that we feel helps not just our health care but our whole economy. In fact, I did message the Treasurer about the importance to our productivity of making sure regular and equitable access to health care is part of the productivity gains we can look for with better health care.
We can trace Labor's history in improved healthcare, as I said, back to the beginnings of Labor government with the first Labor prime minister. It's Labor's way. We really support the PBS, which is thanks to the efforts of John Curtin and Ben Chifley, the Prime Minister and Treasurer in that time during the end of the Second World War and just afterwards. The PBS provides for medicines, materials and appliances to be available to all Australians at an affordable cost. Labor government, we must also remember, introduced the Hospital Benefits Act 1945 at the end of the war, providing for the Commonwealth to subsidise our public hospitals. The present health minister is looking at how we can improve our hospital system as we look to get agreement on the public hospitals act with the state governments at the present time.
I laud the incredible efforts of the Whitlam government and later the Hawke government, through Medibank and later Medicare, to help lead us to a health system which is for all Australians and has helped pave the way for the legislation we're speaking on today—and there will be further measures to come. It's a great legacy of Labor governments. These towering Labor prime ministers—Curtin, Chifley, Hawke and Whitlam—have made Australia a prosperous economy, healthier and more productive. I'm proud that the Albanese Labor government is following in Labor footsteps during these difficult times and also looking forward to how we can design our health system to be even better in the future.
There are a thousand and one factors that affect the cost of living, many of which are outside the realm and scope of government action. However, it is in legislation like this, through supports to the healthcare system, that we can produce meaningful benefits for all Australians. We have to be ever vigilant, and we need to look for ways that we can improve access—and equitable access—to health care. My thoughts are that there are many more things that we can look to do, such as improving access to dental care through our healthcare system and making it more equitable for us to be able to afford visits to specialists. I know the health minister is looking at that. We had almost 10 years of, essentially, inaction by the Liberal-National government, up until the advent of our Labor government in the last term. We have done so much more in that short period of time than the coalition did in almost 10 years. We have more free and cheaper medicines, sooner, and there has been a reduction in the cost of prescriptions for everyone, including those on concessional payments.
One big advance that we've had, in spite of the fact that the coalition fought tooth and nail against it, is the introduction of 60-day prescriptions. That's made a huge difference to people, in terms of both the time they needed to get their medicines and the cost of their medications. I look forward to further increases in the availability of medications over a longer period of time in the future. We've frozen the cost of PBS medicines. Co-payments have not risen with inflation and will not do so, for the first time in 25 years.
We have invested a significant amount of money—over half a billion dollars—into our women's health programs to improve access and awareness on health related matters affecting Australian women. There is much more to be done in this space as well, and I look forward to further action. We shouldn't forget the work we've done to increase Medicare incentives and GP bulk-billing rates, which will come into force through even stronger mechanisms with bulk-billing incentives on 1 November. Our government is encouraging more medical students to enter the rewarding field of general practice, and that's something where we're working on other measures as well.
These are real changes that are producing better outcomes for all Australians. More money in our constituents' pockets mean better financial flexibility, which is a major concern for all Australians. People in my electorate of Macarthur, for example, have saved over $11 million since our cheaper medicines policy came into effect. Yes, there are still issues that we need to address, and it is important that we continue to look at how we can improve the system. Nobody should be pushed into impossible choices between medicine and meals or into skipping treatments, including some really life-changing medications, because they can't afford them. Labor is continuing to look at ways to improve the health care of all Australians. We are working very hard to address cost-of-living concerns, and medication and health costs are part of that. We've improved healthcare access and affordability, but we know we need to continue to work on it.
I'm very proud to be part of this government, and I'm very proud to work for the health minister, Mark Butler, in his efforts to make sure that there's more equitable access to health care and that health care is available to all Australians, no matter where they live across the country, to improve their health and that of their kids. Australia's healthcare system is there to protect Australians, but it's also there to make sure we have a more productive economy. That is very important, and that is part, as I've said, of the DNA of a Labor government.
We have a tremendous health team working towards this, and we won't stop our efforts to improve our healthcare system, which I might say is the envy of the world. I've been to many different countries, from the USA to Europe to our Pacific neighbours, and that demonstrates so well that our healthcare system is the best in the world. I'm very proud of it, and I'm proud of the healthcare workers that work to continue a satisfactory and better system. (Time expired)
