Comment

Mr Hunt, what happens when you are no longer health minister? Can you appreciate how jaded and cynical the industry has become about government pronouncements on the PBS?

The PBS is being forced to exist in a parallel fiscal universe as the government returns to a pre-GFC approach to spending. It is being starved. What is going on? Why? What is the wider agenda?

The fact the government might be arguing about a mystical and virtually non-existent uptick on page 6-21 of Budget Paper No.1 shows just how little respect it has for the industry.

Retaining savings in the PBS is ‘recycling’, not new funding. The PBS has well and truly entered a funding ‘death spiral’ if the requirement is that all new medicines must be paid for from within the scheme.

There is no doubting the extent of the challenge faced by the Board of directors of any organisation in balancing their company interest with that of the wider industry and their legal obligations as directors.

It is not the industry's job to help a government or health minister secure a political objective. A 'do it for the minister' argument is unworthy of this great Australian industry, frankly contemptuous of its 20,000 employees, and fails to understand the long-term risk of a change that takes the PBS one step closer to New Zealand's hideous PHARMAC.​

Industry's frustration over the administration of the PBS could partly reflect the challenge of reconciling its ongoing structural shift from a system heavily reliant and built around HTA to one based on procurement contracts.

The industry does have the right to say 'no'. In fact, and certainly when it comes to this reform, acting on principle and in defence of the PBS requires it to say 'no'.

A lack of commitment to the industry, its standards and issues, what it stands for, and the absence of any interest in being its leading advocate, for whatever reason - these are hardly the qualities of an industry leader.

It appears these days that what the Department of Finance wants, the Department of Finance gets.

Maybe rather than accepting q 'clayton's' new money promise industry might demand a structural change - something that will deliver significant stability or even gains over the long-term.

Two new executives in industry associations and both facing a number of significant and even intractable challenges.