A 7% rise in pharmacy dispensing payments is a rehash of an existing promise and will not absolve the government over 60-day prescribing, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia says. 

Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler is continuing to battle a pharmacy backlash after deciding to let GPs write double-length scripts for hundreds of common medicines, despite promising “every single dollar” of savings would go back to pharmacists.

On Saturday, he announced pharmacies were getting a “major financial boost”.

He said pharmacy payments per script were being indexed by 7% — almost twice the 3.6% indexation rate applied to Medicare rebates on the same day.