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In a policy u-turn, people will only need to pay a single $5 co-payment fee for the new 12-month prescriptions coming into effect from February.
The year-long prescriptions were announced as part of the 2025 Budget as a way to reduce the cost of seeing GPs.
Patients would still need to collect their medicines every three months, and at the time it was thought they would have to pay a $5 fee each time but that will no longer be case.
The backtrack is revealed in a series of Health Ministry documents proactively released three days before Christmas, titled "Cabinet material: Rescinding a prescription co-payment decision".
They show the initial decisio
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