Australia's poorly applied drug policy wastes $320m a year: study

The federal government's failure to implement a competitive regime means potential savings are wasted, thinktank the Grattan Institute says

The federal government is wasting $320m every year through its failure to implement properly a drug-pricing policy for subsidised medicines, a new report from the thinktank the Grattan Institute shows.

The report analyses a policy known as the therapeutic group premium, whereby different drugs used to treat the same condition, and which do exactly the same thing, are clustered into a group. The government then subsidises the cheapest drug within that therapeutic group.