I agree that in this day and age life time scripts are out dated. Scripts could be linked to your medicare card which you can present to any pharmacy. If the doctor wants to review it, the practice can contact the patient directly. In my experience reviews rarely happen, and never every 3 months. I wonder how many of us are on permanent scripts. If it's only a third that still means eight million scripts four times a year. Over to you health minister.

Cholesterol Tablets requiring a script is a bit pointless considering that people will need them for the rest of their life or until a better treatment will become available !

Indy,

How much do you pay for medical prescriptions on the PBS? Are you massively subsidised by us taxpayers. Flash the good old 'free pass' and its another case of the snout in the trough no doubt.

Paul1405,
I've been a Tax payer for a lot longer than you'll ever be !

Dear mhaze,

Mate you do say some idiotic things on a monotonously regular basis.

“Medicare is a government run system. By definition therefore it is financially profligate and inefficient.”

Well no. On of the most privatised health system in the world is the US and the worst for results per dollar spent.

Life expectancy graphed against per capita spend compared to other OECD countries is abominable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita

I know you will not acknowledge the reality but it is there for all to see. On the issue of providing healthcare government systems far outstrip those of the private sector.

You claimed “Medicare of course relies heavily on that portion of the population who have private health insurance and access private facilities that alleviate the pressure on the public system.”

No it doesn’t which is something that has been known for years:

“A 10 percent reduction in rebates is expected to yield net savings of $215 million each year, as the savings from reducing the subsidy ($359 million) are higher than the expected increase in government spending on public hospitals ($144 million). On the whole, savings from reducing spending on rebates outweigh the predicted increase in public hospital costs by roughly a factor of 2.5.”
http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/publications/policy-briefs/result?paper=2168182

Do catch up son.

As usual SR tries to re-orientate the debate and then attacks others based on the re-orientation.

I said nothing about the relative efficacy of Medicare as opposed to other nations. SR does that and then tries to assert error.

And as usual SR narrows an almost infinitely complex issue in one set of numbers that he likes and then treats those numbers as the only issue. Of course, it is well known that the US spends enormous amounts on health. That says nothing about the efficacy or otherwise of Australia's system despite SR's fantasies. There are several other causes for the US costs (did I mention that this issue is almost infinitely complex?) for example the general litigiousness of the US legal system as well as the extra costs the US incurs due to the high number of so-called refugees entering the system and seeking free-health care. (there are also a not inconsiderable number of Canadians seeking timely health care not available in their nationalised system).

But again comparing countries (especial via one metric) is a fool's errand and says nothing about the relative efficiency of Medicare. One only needs to be involved in that labyrinthine edifice for a short time to see how bureaucratically overloaded it is.