Now lawHealth & Care Introduced in the House of Representatives, 30 Jul 2025

PBS medicines now cost at most $25 a script

This law cut the most a general patient pays for a medicine the government helps pay for. A general patient is someone with no concession card, like a pension card. The price fell from $31.60 to $25 from 1 January 2026. Over 5.1 million Australians now pay less at the chemist.

Official name: National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025

Who it affects

• People with a Medicare card but no concession card: You pay at most $25 for each script, which is a doctor's prescription, down from $31.60.
• Pensioners and other concession card holders: Nothing changes. You still pay $7.70 a script.
• Families who use lots of medicines: Each script costs less. But the safety net stays the same. That is the yearly spend after which scripts get cheaper. Because it stays the same, so it takes more scripts to reach it.
• Chemists: They can no longer give general patients the small discount on the charge.
• Drug companies with special price deals: They will pay back about $95.5 million more to the government over four years.

Scripts cost up to $31.60

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is the medicine scheme. Through it, the government pays most of the cost of many prescription medicines. Some of these medicines cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a script. You pay a set amount, called a co-payment. The government pays the rest.

In 2023-24, people filled 226.5 million scripts under the scheme. The government spent $18 billion on it.

General patients are people with a Medicare card but no concession card. Their co-payment was $42.50 until 1 January 2023. Then it dropped to $30. That was the first cut in 75 years. By 2025 it had gone up with prices to $31.60.

The government studied the problem. It found nearly 1.2 million Australians put off or skipped a script because of cost in 2023-24. At the 2025 election, Labor and the Liberal and National parties (the Coalition) both promised to cut the charge to $25.

The new $25 charge

The law changes the National Health Act 1953. That is the law that runs the medicine scheme. It sets the general patient charge at $25.

Normally the charge goes up each 1 January in line with prices. The government uses the Consumer Price Index to measure how fast prices rise. The law skips that rise on 1 January 2026, so the charge stays at $25. Yearly rises start again from 1 January 2027.

Say you take a cholesterol pill and a blood pressure pill every month. Both cost more than $25. You used to pay $63.20 a month for the two. Now you pay $50. Over a year you save $158.40.

If a medicine costs less than $25 in total, you pay the lower price, as before.

Optional pharmacy discount ends

Since 1 January 2016, chemists could choose to take up to $1 off the co-payment. By 1 January 2025 that discount had shrunk to 10 cents for general patients. It went down each time the charge would have gone up.

The rest of the law removes the rules about this discount for general patients. The government says it would have run out from 1 January 2026 anyway.

Chemists can still choose to cut the price of some cheaper medicines under other rules. That is up to each shop.

What does not change

Concession card holders still pay $7.70 a script. An earlier law froze that amount until the end of 2029.

The safety net stays the same. Once a family spends $1,694 on general scripts in a year, the rest of their scripts that year cost $7.70. The Parliamentary Library works for all MPs and takes no side. It points out that a cheaper charge means it now takes more scripts to reach that amount.

Some people get medicines through the Closing the Gap program. It helps First Nations people with long-term illness. Their scripts keep counting toward the safety net at the old $42.50 rate. So they do not have to fill more scripts to reach it.

Start date

The cut started on 1 January 2026.

The House of Representatives passed the bill on 28 August 2025. The Senate, Parliament's second house, passed it on 1 September 2025. During that debate, senators agreed to a formal statement from the Australia's Voice party, a small party. It added a comment but did not change the bill. The Governor-General, who stands in for the King, signed it into law on 4 September 2025. It became Act No. 39 of 2025, its official law number.

How they voted

Its journey through Parliament

Official sources

• Bill page on aph.gov.au
• Text of the bill
• Explanatory memorandum
• Bills Digest

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