According to an article published in The Conversation, a government-funded journal run by government-funded universities, companies are playing 'hardball' and 'bullying' on pharmaceutical pricing in Australia.
The authors of 'How drug companies are playing hardball with Australia’s PBS' assert, "Pharmaceutical companies are highly profitable. And much research and development for new drugs is publicly subsidised. Public reimbursement of medicines is also key to equitable and affordable access. So the PBS should not give in to industry bullying."
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) chair, Professor Robyn Ward, liked a supportive social media post related to the article. At the time of publication, Professor Ward had not answered any questions regarding her decision to like the post.
The article is significantly focused on the recent pricing dispute over multiple sclerosis medicine. In that case, government officials manoeuvred a company into offering an almost 50 per cent price reduction to secure a PBS listing. They then attempted to impose that reduction on other medicines. The companies refused on the basis that it would compel them to remove the medicines from the PBS.
In this case, who is the bully playing hardball?
The government manipulating a naive company to demolish 50 per cent of the value of an existing therapeutic market? Or, companies seeking to protect that market, and by implication, patient access to medicines.
It is assinine for anyone to argue that a private company has an obligation to accept any government-imposed price for its product.
As a country, we haven't quite arrived at a situation where government can set a price and compel a private company to supply a product at that price.
It gets worse.
One solution, according to the authors, is, "If a company is selling it elsewhere, Australia can buy it directly from another country via parallel imports."
There we go. Australian government officials roaming the world as global medicine 'pirates' seeking the back-door procurement of privately held intellectual property.
From which countries, precisely? Who would do the procuring? Who would carry the obvious legal risks? Frankly, there are not enough of the relevant lawyers in Australia to support the court cases it would trigger.
Is it too obvious to point out that the availability of medicines in other countries, while they are not available in Australia, might have something to do with pricing? In other words, it would probably be more expensive than just agreeing to pay a viable price in Australia.
As this publication recently noted in another article, in the words of George Orwell, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool."
There is more.
"International drug companies that do not apply for PBS listing or remove existing medicines from the market are likely to remain the exception, not the norm, as they will lose out on sales of their medicines," assert the authors.
How's that for a sophisticated analysis of global pharmaceutical pricing?
These authors are clearly of the 'burn the house down to save it' mindset. At no point do they contemplate the need for the Australian Government to adjust policy settings in response to new global realities to ensure patients continue to access medicines.
The logical extension of their argument is that multiple sclerosis patients should be denied reimbursed access to these medicines to prove a point. Sacrificing patients to make a point, all in the name of a dogma.
The article is laden with long-held tropes about the pharmaceutical industry and patient groups.
How is it that, according to these authors, a relationship between a pharmaceutical company and a patient group, who obviously have a shared interest, is bad, but government funding is good?
Government is just another vested interest, albeit with significant power.
In Australian pharmaceutical policy, the government sets the rules and appoints the umpire.
The real conflict is the shilling some government-funded people do on behalf of government policy. It's made worse when it's supported by government-funded consumer groups and government-funded media.
