In short:
Pharmacists say the bureaucracy of the PBS Safety Net, a government scheme which gives millions of Australians cheaper medicine, is so “clunky” thousands of people are missing out.
Examples of the scheme’s shortcomings, advocates say, include needing to use snail mail to file paperwork and not having a centralised system to calculate patients’ spending.
What’s next?
Consumer advocates and pharmacists have called on the government to invest in the scheme.
Does it really work that way?
I thought you could get multiple pharmacies to give you the list of PBS stuff they’ve dispensed for you.
There’s a form for it online. I didn’t realise the pharmacist had to send it off.
I think technically it can be filled out with the help of the pharmacist, but they need to issue the card to you and then you tell Services Australia it’s been issued essentially. This is the form in question: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/pb240
Yeah ok.
It looks as though you can get a list from whatever pharmacies you’ve been to, and then get one pharmacy to fill out the form and issue the card.
It totally is a big mess.