Documents reveal net PBS spending set to remain on life support to the end of decade

A newly released document has, for the first time, revealed forecast net spending on the PBS to the end of the decade after rebates, and it's not good news. Why are officials calling it a new 'charging' framework instead of cost recovery? The documents provide a critical piece of intelligence that leaders must consume, and why history matters.

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has committed significant resources to a Canberra consultancy to build a new "charging model" for assessing medicines, vaccines and medical devices for public subsidy. It has not said publicly what the model covers, what it could mean for the fees companies pay, or when stakeholders will see it.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme's share of Commonwealth health spending has fallen by about 40 per cent since 2000, and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing forecasts a further decline.

Surely the issue of sustainability, raised by a senior official during Friday's webinar and long defined as not paying too much, deserves reconsideration. The PBS is becoming unsustainable because of the 'Faustian bargain' that, while well-intentioned for so many years, is now killing the program's ability to meet its policy objectives.

The melanoma study's principal investigator, Professor Georgina Long of Melanoma Institute Australia, said the results "have the potential to make a foundational shift in how we treat patients".

From February 2027, women will be able to get free consultations for uncomplicated urinary tract infections, start hormonal contraception and receive contraception resupply at participating community pharmacies.

As current agreements have shown, trying to fix today's problems often creates new, even worse ones. Industry groups should approach the next agreement negotiations with 2031 and 2032 in mind, not the problems of 2026 and 2027.

Millions of Australians have shown they will pay full price for prescription medicines they want. They have shown less appetite for paying for vaccines they are told they need. As pressure on public funding builds, that may not hold.

Australian biotech Recce Pharmaceuticals has signed a deal with Arrotex Pharmaceuticals to sell its experimental topical gel for diabetic foot infections in Australia and New Zealand.

CSL has named Deborah Waterhouse, a British pharmaceutical executive who helped negotiate Australian medicines policy more than 15 years ago, as its next chief executive and managing director.

GLP-1 medicines were a key part of the update. Sigma said the business was still growing even though the first sales boost from these medicines is now in the base. "Growth is encouraging as we have now cycled the initial structural uplift from the introduction of GLP-1 sales," Managing Director and Chief Executive Vikesh Ramsunder said.

Britain has made an expensive, public bid to win back pharmaceutical investment, and it has not yet paid off. That is the finding of Open for Business, a new report from consultancy Evohealth, which describes the UK's effort as "a commitment, not yet a conversion".

Telix Pharmaceuticals has reaffirmed that it will pass US$1 billion in revenue and other income this year. Its third-quarter sales were consistent with the previous quarter, and it is working through a US$1.65 billion merger.

BioNTech has opened its clinical-scale mRNA manufacturing and research facility at La Trobe University's Bundoora campus, nearly three years after announcing the plan.

If anything, it is remarkable that patient groups advocate so strongly for access to medicines when the companies that make them provide so little of their funding. Advocacy that persists without the money cannot be explained by the money. It is explained by what patients need.

It reflects a maturing market. Growth no longer depends only on new patients. It also draws on a large and growing pool of former users, many of whom stopped because of cost or a dislike of injections, and who may return when the product, price, or format changes.

Patient groups in Australia and New Zealand are the most active in the Asia-Pacific region in putting patient cases to medicines regulators and funders.

A new paper published in the MJA warns that pharmaceutical companies' money threatens the independence of patient groups. Its own numbers tell a different story, and the biggest funder of consumer health advocacy goes unexamined.

The research-based industry is considering pushing for a reference pricing law in its new agreement with the Commonwealth. The risk is that the Government agrees, because while a policy can be set aside, a statute is mostly immovable.

Oncologists have been having these conversations for so long that Private Cancer Physicians of Australia now runs communication skills workshops on discussing high-cost medicines. Every oncologist and haematologist "will have their stories", Steer said, and many patients turn to groups such as Rare Cancers Australia for help raising money.