MEDICINES Australia has noted that while the top line figure for PBS expenditure has increased to $12.058 billion (PD 22 Dec 2017), this figure is "somewhat misleading" because it does not take into account that $3.2 billion was repaid to the government via rebates from pharmaceutical companies.
That in turn means the actual PBS spend was $8.858 billion, meaning the cost of the PBS remains flat thanks to the rebates paid by the pharmaceutical industry.
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