David Cullinane
Ceist:1626. Deputy David Cullinane asked the Minister for Health the estimated cost of permanently reducing the drugs payment scheme threshold from €100 to €60 in increments of €5. [29860/22]
Amharc ar fhreagraTuesday, 14 June 2022
Ceisteanna (1626)
Freagraí scríofa
The Drug Payment Scheme (DPS) provides for the refund of the amount by which expenditure on approved prescribed medicines or medical and surgical appliances exceeds a named threshold in any calendar month. The DPS is not means tested and is available to anyone normally resident in Ireland.The Health Services (Amendment) Regulations 2021 (S.I. No. 595 of 2021) reduced the DPS threshold to €100 per month as of 1 January 2022.
The Health Services (Amendment) Regulations 2022 (S.I. No 77 of 2022) further reduced the DPS threshold to €80 per month as of 1 March 2022.When producing models to estimate the impact of downward threshold reductions the Health Service Executive (HSE) examines the impact of previous downward changes. This requires a reasonable amount of data at each threshold change to provide some level of assurance that an estimate is reasonable, especially as the HSE does not have data on sub-threshold prescriptions. Given the recency of the DPS threshold changes, there is insufficient data available to the HSE to robustly estimate the impact of further changes.
However, preliminary data indicates that the reduction from €114 to €100 has benefitted between 9,553 and 12,251 families per month (on average, 10,495 families per month) and the reduction from €100 to €80 has benefitted an additional 18,943 families based on the first month of data for that change. Preliminary data further suggests the full year budget impact of the threshold change from €100 to €80, which came into effect on 1 March 2022, may be around €20m.
Based on this first month of data, the full year estimated minimum cost of reducing the DPS threshold from the current threshold of €80 per month, in increments of €5, is as outlined in the below table.
|
Proposed DPS Threshold |
Cost of Reduction* |
|
€75 |
€6.5m |
|
€70 |
€13m |
|
€65 |
€19.5m |
|
€60 |
€26m |
This data is subject to the following caveats. The source data used is the claiming month March 2022, the first claiming month for the new DPS threshold of €80 per month. The source data is annualized to determine cost (i.e., multiplied by 12). The costings exclude the cost for any individuals who are below the current threshold level of €80 per month. The costings exclude any impact resulting from an aging demographic.