The current parliamentary inquiry into approval processes for drugs and novel medical technologies seems to spend much of its time perpetuating asinine tropes about pharmaceutical companies and patient groups.
Within the first minutes of today's hearing in Melbourne, inquiry chair Trent Zimmerman essentially accused companies of inappropriately using patient groups to influence decision-making while withholding information on a particular medicine or issue.
The committee even used the term 'Trojan horse' to describe the relationship between industry and patient groups.
It represents a profound misunderstanding of the relationship and completely infantilises patient groups - a relationship that is covered by legislative requirements that limit communication on individual products, particularly those yet to be approved, and the industry's own codes of conduct.
Moreover, why would anyone be surprised the interests of a patient group and a company developing a relevant treatment are closely aligned?
The consistent questioning of this relationship has the singular purpose of undermining and discrediting the advocacy of patient groups. It is incredibly disrespectful of patients because it perpetuates the idea they are just vulnerable 'innocents' being manipulated by multinational pharmaceutical companies.
In fact, if there is a Trojan horse in Australia's decision-making processes, it is the government's approach to consumer and patient groups.
The irony of questioning the industry's long-standing but constantly evolving relationship with patient groups on the same day the government is 'astroturfing' a group of stakeholders at its Cancer Roundtable in Canberra.
There is obviously merit in ensuring a patient voice earlier in decision-making processes. There might even be merit in providing patients with more information on the reimbursement a sponsor is seeking.
Yet the idea of giving patients early access to sponsor submissions belies the reality these things are virtually unreadable past the first page. They are significantly comprised of economic models and clinical data.
Providing a plain language version of what a company is seeking sounds like a very good idea but does anyone seriously think this will make decision-making processes for new medicines better?
What is the relationship between access to sponsor submissions and actual access to treatment?
It reflects the 'infallibility' view of decision-making that patronisingly argues patients would be more accepting of outcomes if only they understood.
This is also only one small aspect of transparency - transparency of sponsor information is not transparency. Any discussion on transparency needs to consider the transparency of decision-making.
The PBAC process and PBS decision-making, in general, is opaque. The Department of Health will not even release the agendas of PBAC Executive meetings while Public Summary Documents are heavily curated to the extent they are documents with the primary purpose of 'marketing' outcomes.
Then there is the irony of this parliamentary committee lecturing on transparency given it heard from some of Australia's key decision-makers on access to new medicines and novel medical technologies, in private, and is yet to publicly acknowledge this fact.
Unfortunately, this morning has once again given the appearance of avoiding the substantive issues impacting approval processes and shifting the responsibility for access delays to the industry.
