Paracetamol and aspirin could be taken off Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) in a proposed budget measure designed to save millions of dollars.

The pharmaceutical benefits advisory committee is reviewing the PBS and the proposal to remove medications such as paracetamol and antacids has the cautious support of the opposition. Labor’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, has called it “sensible”.

Moving paracetamol off the PBS would stop pensioners using such prescriptions to get the 60 scripts a year required for all subsequent scripts to be free, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

Paracetamol, which is sold in supermarkets and convenience stores as well as over the counter at pharmacies, usually costs between $2.89 and $3.50 for a pack of 20. According to figures from the Department of Health there were 6.7m scripts for paracetamol written in 2013-14 at a cost of $73m to the government. There were 1.1m scripts for aspirin, at a cost of $4m and 219,000 scripts for antacids at a cost of $2.6m.

For a 100 pack of paracetamol bought with a script it usually costs $8.66 on the PBS, including a dispensing fee of $6.76, according to the department. This cost is broken down as $2.56 to the government and $6.10 to the concessional patient.

The health minister, Sussan Ley, said although it was not a confirmed policy, the government felt very positive about the proposal in discussions with the Pharmacy Guild.

“Ultimately I want a better deal for consumers, I want consumers to be able to have access to affordable medicines at cheapest possible rates,” she said on Sunday, rejecting the suggestion the policy was more about the budget bottom line than benefitting consumers.

“There are some perverse disincentives and perverse incentives built into the system at the moment. The government is paying a lot of money for people to access Panadol and other over-the-counter medications at the chemist on script, that’s not necessarily sustainable and not necessarily in the interest of patients overall.”

Ley could not put a figure on how much the measure could potentially save the budget and said it was also a possibility scripts across the board would be reduced by $1. When asked about pensioners potentially using paracetamol scripts to get to the 60 threshold for free scripts, Ley said it was not about people “rorting the system”.

“I’m confident this is in the interests of consumers, it’s in the interest of our budget and in the interests of our whole medicine supply chain,” she said.

Ley would not be drawn on reports codeine could potentially be made a prescription-only drug, saying it was not her decision what was over the counter and what was not.

The proposal to take paracetamol, aspirin and antacids has in-principle support from the opposition.

“It is very sensible to constantly review the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and look at what is on there,” King said on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning.

“The government’s locked in some very intense negotiations with the pharmacy guild over the sixth pharmacy agreement at the moment and I suspect the story you have seen today is a precursor to some of those negotiations.”

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia would not say if it would support the measures.

“We’re not really commenting on that today. It’s a speculative pre-budget story and we’re not adding to it,” a spokesman said.