Australian government PBS decision lacks evidence base, trade group tells conference

Australia’s federal government is ignoring its own growth forecasts for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), and making policy decisions without an evidence base, trade group Medicines Australia chief executive Brendan Shaw told industry experts in Sydney yesterday.

Speaking at the 8th Annual Future of the PBS Conference, Dr Shaw said the federal Cabinet would have found no need to block the listing of new medicines on the PBS if it had taken into account its own forecasts of modest PBS growth (The Pharma Letter May 3), noting: “If the government had even bothered to look at its own forecasts of what the PBS is going to be doing over the coming years, they would have seen there is no reason for them to take the course of action they did.”

He said that the Treasury’s own forward estimates contained in last year’s Budget show that the PBS is only going to grow by 2.1% per annum in real terms over the next four years, yet the government chooses to ignore all of its own projections and its own data and continues to impose further ad hoc, knee-jerk cost containment measures.