My name's Jeanette. I'm 52 years old and I live in Melbourne, Victoria. In 2019, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and that was after I'd experienced joint pain for around two years. It had taken so long to diagnose because I have a type of arthritis that doesn't show up in blood tests. At the same time, I was also going through menopause, which can have some similar symptoms to rheumatoid arthritis. So after diagnosis, I then spent about two years trying lots of different types of medications to see which would work best, and that obviously also was quite costly as I was changing the medications every few months to see what would work. I'm on four medications to manage my health conditions.
All of the medications that I take are listed on The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme or the PBS and two of the four that I take, I pay the $31.60 for the monthly prescription. So the lowering of the co-payment to $25 will make quite a significant difference to me. For my four medications, I could save nearly $30 each month. It's really making a huge difference to my finances. I think these changes to the co-payment will really have a big impact on some people that might have had to delay filling a script in the past for financial reasons. I would really encourage anyone that's worried about the cost of their medications to talk to their pharmacist. For more information, visit the website.