A petition to remove prescription fees for people with community service cards has been presented to Parliament.
The 4000-signature petition, penned by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the United Community Action Network (UCANNZ), aims to lower the barrier to healthcare for low-income households who struggle to pay the $5 prescription fee when living paycheck to paycheck.
CPAG's health spokesperson professor Nikki Turner told Breakfast that the current fees exacerbate severe health issues for low-income families.
"It's really hard for us who are not on low incomes to really understand this - the cost of a prescription is around the cost of a coffee, it's $5 an item, but the lived experiences of how hard it is in the moment for people on a low income to have $5," she said.
Turner said that because of the fee, many community cardholders must delay picking up essential medication for things like diabetes, chest and skin infections and asthma.
"To me, that's a coffee, but really low-income people are juggling these issues all the time.
"I've had [people with] skin infections that have delayed treatment by two to three days, so it's spread to the whole family - people with chronic chests who then take weeks to get better because they delayed starting their antibiotics.
"This [petition] is a pragmatic way of supporting people who are doing it really hard at the moment," she said.
Turner said that while subsidies are available for those who can't afford certain medications, more is needed, and the bureaucratic process takes too long.
"There are different ways of accessing subsidies, but they're delayed; people need the cost at the moment, and that's what people really don't have.
For small local pharmacies, Turner said that waiving the prescription fee will provide them with support against the larger corporations who can afford to pay the prescription charge themselves.
"The small community pharmacies are doing it really hard - we need our local community pharmacies - they don't have the large capital backing to be able to wave the $5 cost of issuing that item," she said.
Turner hopes that the presentation of the petition shows just how simple the issue is to solve. She hopes it will eliminate the need for bureaucracy when claiming subsidies by allowing people to pick up their prescriptions in the moment.
The petition was accepted by Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March outside Parliament at 9am this morning.
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