Despite numerous leaks about impending changes to medicines policy, the budget showed savings of just $252.2 million over five years from adjusting the price of a small number of PBS-listed drugs.
Australians make an average of 14 visits to the pharmacy for medicines and advice every year but most don’t know about the agreement that governs how we buy government-subsidised medicines from them.
Apart from proposing a co-payment for visiting doctors, the last federal budget also contained a proposal to increase the level of co-payments for medications. The government seems to have given little…
Decisions about public subsidies for high-cost drugs are naturally quite complex. And while patients have increasingly been given a voice in the process, the views of the wider community have generally…
Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series…
Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series…
Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series…
The Abbott government has announced a A$20 billion medical research “future fund”, to help discover what Treasurer Joe Hockey calls the “cures of the future”, paid for with money generated as a result…
When it comes to pharmaceuticals expenditure, the National Commission of Audit’s proposals rate highly on any policy change scale. Its two main recommendations are designed to reduce the overall cost to…
Hepatitis C is a hidden epidemic affecting 170 million people worldwide. Hepatitis C kills nearly 700 Australians every year, mostly from chronic liver failure and liver cancer, and costs over $78.9 million…
Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology y Adam Swift, Queensland University of Technology
The Abbott government is preparing to cut funding to the ABC. The end of the Australia Network in its present form is one saving already flagged by communications minister Malcolm Turnbull. And while the…
Reviews by specially-trained pharmacists of the medication taken by elderly people have been funded by the federal government for over 15 years now. But a secret deal followed by a sudden announcement…
It seems that every week a major breakthrough in the understanding of cancer is announced in the media. So where are all the drugs that should flow from these discoveries? Unfortunately, the road from…
The Consumers Health Forum has just launched a website containing information about the cost of generic drugs in Australia compared to other countries. Each day, Australians pay A$3 million more for these…
Decisions whether to publicly fund new drugs or not are often tough. Should the government fund a drug that has promising early results or wait until its effects and safety issues are better understood…
A government-appointed committee makes a recommendation that would save taxpayers $260 million within a year, but it’s ignored. And people at risk of heart attacks lose out. Let me explain via a ripping…
The body responsible for regulating drugs in Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), is poised to decide whether to restrict access to benzodiazepines, such as Xanax, Valium and Normison…
The retail pharmacy industry in Australia has successfully acquired a monopoly on supplying medicines paid for by the government or consumers. The industry describes this set-up as being the “best subsidized…
The Commonwealth could save A$1.3 billion each year by reforming the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), according to a report released today by the Grattan Institute. The report, Australia’s bad drug…
The Australian government introduced a controversial delay to the approval process for subsidised medicines last year, in an attempt to cut costs. We decided to examine the timelines of the approval process…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne