The letter from Medicines Australia to Prime Minister Tony Abbott doesn't read like a declaration of war.
It appears to reflect an industry deeply frustrated and desperate for a prime ministerial interventon to avoid the worst aspects of the Department of Health's PBS savings measures.
To put it in context, Medicines Australia accepts the need for savings, undertakes to work with the Government to identify and agree appropriate measures, but concedes the Government's right to proceed with the Budget, as is, in the absence of any agreement.
It's incredibly polite and no declaration of war.
However, there is no doubt that feelings inside the research-based sector are visceral.
In fact, feelings across the sector are visceral, with the Pharmacy Guild and its membership in the midst of its own battle regarding the Budget, specifically the proposed co-payment change.
It's an extraordinary situation. How did it get to this?
Both these groups have been deeply offended at the way they have been treated during the current process - ever-increasing savings targets, groups being played off against each other and even operating off different lists of proposals.
Is that really the way Government should treat a sector it identifies as having strategic significance for Australia?
It's worth considering the sector's extraordinary and admirable record of working with Government on Budget savings.
It negotiated and implemented previous changes - price disclosure - that have delivered a structural transformation in pharmaceutical spending virtually unmatched in any other social policy program since Federation, to the extent that the cost PBS has declined in real terms this decade.
The point is that, if there was ever a sector a Government could deal with for Budget savings, this is the one. So, what's gone wrong?
Cabinet is almost certain to endorse the Department of Health's PBS Budget proposals, but you would hope that, at the very least, the Medicines Australia letter and advocacy by the Guild and its members might trigger some questions about the process and how a sector with such an incredible record of partnering with Government reached the point where just days from the Budget it felt compelled to act in such a way.
