Generic medicines pricing reforms deliver significant savings to Australian government, says CSES report

Australia’s 2010 Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) reforms have delivered the government significant savings. A report by Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, released this week, estimates that savings to government and general patients (non-health-card holding patients) will be up to A$18 billion ($17.53 billion) over eight years.

However, while these savings are good news for government in the short term, members of the generic medicines sector are very concerned about the medium term consequences of reaping such significant sums of money from the generic medicines industry and the ramifications this will have on the continued surety of supply of generic medicines to patients, says the nation’s Generic Medicines Industry Association (GMiA).

2012 should have been a year of growth for the generic medicines sector with A$1.2 billion of medicines coming off patent. Instead, sales in the generic medicines sector declined over that period the GMiA notes.