Budget 2023: National vows to bring back $5 prescription fees if elected

The National Party says it will repeal the Labour’s removal of a $5 charge on medicine prescriptions if elected.

The scrapping of the $5 cost of prescriptions was one of the major spending initiatives in the Government’s 2023 Budget, published on Thursday, expected to cost $706m for the coming four years.

But it is among the plans most opposed by the Opposition.

National Party finance spokesperson Nicola Willis told Stuff National would return the $5 charge to prescriptions if elected, as it was a “nice to have should not be the priority”.

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“I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the fact there are lower-income people for whom I don’t want prescriptions to be a barrier. Well, actually, there are already targetted ways of ensuring they don’t face prescription fees,” she said.

“And you have the Chemist Warehouse offering all prescriptions for free. So, in effect, the Government ends up subsidising that and also subsidising a lot of higher-income people who are perfectly happy to pay that charge.”

National similarly did not support a move by the Government to make public transport for children under 13-years-old free, and to half the price for children and young adults between 13 and 24-years-old.

Willis said instead of expanding a subsidy of 20-hours a week free childcare to include two-year-olds – it currently covers children aged three to five-years – National wanted to give young families direct monetary support of $75 a week.

“The money goes straight into your bank account, rather than going via the Government subsidy system and into childcare centres,” she said.

“I’ve already had a childcare centre contact me this afternoon to say that the policy that the Government’s put forward today, as it’s been described, would mean that they would probably have to close because they can’t see how they make the sums add up.”

She said National wanted to see tax relief, or tax cuts, for New Zealanders, something that was not a feature of the Budget.

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said the prescription co-payments were an “incredible barrier” for accessing healthcare, as the existing prescription subsidy card was not reaching the people that needed it.

“I feel very strongly about this. The pharmacies that are scrapping the co-pay themselves are the big box pharmacies and the small community pharmacies aren’t able use the co-pay as a lot loss-leader.”

If the big box pharmacies then took the co-pay subsidy to provide the services and support needed “that’s fine”, she said.

ACT Party leader David Seymour said the Government’s removal of prescription fees and subsidy of public transport would be “eaten up by inflation driven by out-of-control Government spending”.

Green Party health spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March said he was pleased the Government was removing the cost, a “significant barrier for people on low incomes”.

“Five dollars may not seem like much, but for many households it is another unavoidable added cost on top of food and rent.”