Petition asks Parliament to remove $5 prescription fee for community service card holders

The Child Poverty Action Group and the United Community Action Network are jointly petitioning Parliament to get prescription fees removed for all Community Service Card holders.

The petition, which was submitted by Wellington GP Nikki Turner on behalf of the two advocacy groups on 15 September, closes on 2 November and currently has 138 signatures.

Dr Turner says the petition will be considered by Parliament and then hopefully the health select committee regardless of how many signatures are gathered. However, more signatures will mean it has more impact.

Low-income households are currently experiencing significant financial hardship and Dr Turner says the $5 cost per item to a maximum of 20 items in any one year is a significant barrier to accessing these medications.

“I know anecdotally from GPs in low-income practices that we have lots of people who really delay picking up their scripts or are not picking them up at all because of the cost… We have quite a major problem with people missing out on important medications.”

She is also aware that some large commercial organisations - discount pharmacies - use their private resources to waive the $5 fee but smaller community pharmacies cannot afford to do this.

“This is very difficult for local community pharmacies who have often put a lot of support into low-income families to help them access medication, and now they are losing customers to some of the big commercial organisations,” she says.

Dr Turner says as a GP she appreciates the huge amount of work pharmacies do for low-income communities and that this is often unrecognised.

The two groups decided to ask for prescriptions fees to be removed only for Community Service Card holders because removing the fees for the entire population would cost much more money, meaning the Government is less likely to agree to it.

Also, many New Zealanders do not have trouble with paying the $5 fee.

Dr Turner does not know exactly how much the proposal would cost to implement but says it would benefit approximately 1 million New Zealanders who have the cards, including all beneficiaries.