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BioPharmaDispatch - discussing the issues impacting the Australian biopharmaceutical and life sciences sectors with Paul Cross and Felicity McNeill.
180 Episodes
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Australia’s health system is overly bureaucratic, opaque, and misaligned, with reforms like the HTA Review slowing access rather than improving it. Decision-making prioritises institutional processes over patients, who remain largely excluded despite bearing the consequences. The system is based on a transactional model, and without genuine patient-led change, core structural problems will continue.
In this week's episode, the discussion focuses on Health Minister Mark Butler's address at an event in Sydney and its invocation of history as the framework for pending negotiations over HTA reforms and PBS pricing. Also, strange comments by one senior official about evidence in healthcare decision-making send a clear signal about some of the thinking that might impact the next one to two years.
A powerful patient story was overshadowed by a mindset that expects patients to simplify their needs and accept delays. Some proposed reforms risk entrenching these problems, while claims of having a 'world-class system' gaslight patients and seek to shut down scrutiny. This is about power. Institutions hold it, and patients are expected to adapt, meaning they must not relent in their push for change.
How Australia’s health system is failing patients by prioritising process and cost control over timely access to treatment, forcing more to rely on compassionate access programs. HTA processes are slow, often dehumanising, and used by the government as a delay tactic. Meaningful reform requires shifting away from process-driven decision-making toward real patient needs. The opportunity articulated this week by one leader is to pursue a more strategic approach to policy. The episode also highl...
In this episode, we examine funding uncertainty for genomic profiling through OMICO, structural tensions within the PBS and pharmaceutical supply chain, and broader concerns about how political and financial incentives shape health policy and budget decisions. The episode concludes with an uncomfortable discussion of recent public commentary on hostility against some communities (trigger warning).
Australia’s system for deciding whether new health technologies are funded is too focused on contested models and not enough on real people and their needs. The lack of human consideration leads to long delays, avoidable suffering, and sometimes deaths, in a process where patient voices are 'summarised' into oblivion while insiders talk around the problem instead of fixing it quickly, openly, and based on our shared values.
Mark Butler’s four 'pillars' on medicines policy and the argument that Australia prioritises low prices over preventing shortages and ensuring access. Do we need smarter, targeted incentives to address shortages that often reflect global challenges? Is there a risk of 'process creep' that actually slows access? Aged-care reforms that unintentionally removed funding for dose administration aids and glucose monitoring.
The Government has announced an additional $25 billion for public hospitals over five years, representing close to two PBSs, while NDIS spending is still rising by $1 billion every few months. Can anyone seriously still argue that there is no new money available to invest in medicines?
Not for the first time, some Australian politicians are in trouble over their use of very generous travel entitlements. We discuss why it matters for patients and why the claim that they are acting within the rules does not stack up.
A turbulent round of Senate Estimates, highlighted by a heartbreaking exchange about a mother with two children battling Crohn’s disease. Officials suggested that the family seek compassionate access from companies or seek treatment at a public hospital. We also canvass ‘MFN’ pricing risks, FOI controversies, ministerial travel blowouts and looming budget pressures that do not operate according to what might be a common understanding.
In this week’s Dispatched Podcast, we unpack the AI Health Summit and agree it revealed a gap between institutional caution and the real-world pace of its adoption. The practical reality of the proposed ban on genetic testing for life insurance, the self-limiting nature of Australia’s health reform processes, the status quo bias, and the absence of any genuine patient-centred purpose in current settings. We also discuss productivity, a critical roundtable, access inequities and the opportunit...
Reform efforts can struggle because they focus on health systems at their strongest point rather than their weakest. Framing is a pernicious tool used to justify delays and denials. We argue that the uptake of GLP-1 therapies in the US is delivering remarkable results, and that we need to apply the lessons from that experience in Australia, challenging institutional narratives and reframing the public debate to focus on public health benefits.
We discuss what could be a significant policy shift in PBS decision-making, with clinical judgement backed by what is a 'common sense' outcome. It could be a new precedent, but only if all stakeholders demand clarity on the criteria so that it can be applied more broadly. We also reflect on patient advocacy in New Zealand, where access has become a political issue and the focus of a significant discussion at this week's Valuing Life Summit in Wellington.
Has Senate Estimates devolved into an overly polite, time-sliced format that enables waffle, obfuscation, and endless questions taken on notice? Does this reflect weakened scrutiny? The responses provided revealed the truth of review processes, which aim to protect institutional power, blame outsiders for problems, and generally add complexity to existing problems. Few appear willing to say the quiet part out loud. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
We open by marking Yom Kippur and a frank discussion before pivoting to the US 'MFN' drug-pricing moves, what they could mean for Australia’s PBS, and why institutional rigidity in HTA persists and is worsening. Medical research funding rhetoric versus slow progress in PBS and health technology access, hospital funding and NDIS pressures, and the expansion of pharmacist prescribing, as well as the need for subsidised pharmacy services.
On the Dispatched Podcast this week, we reflect on the erosion of public confidence in health decision-making. Former Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton’s admission that some COVID-19 measures were not strictly evidence-based highlights the need for a Royal Commission, which would have compelled accountability and helped restore trust. The discussion then turns to MSAC’s rejection of newborn screening for Pompe disease. Health Minister Mark Butler must intervene, not least because he...
An update on the Government's travel policy! The opportunity of AI, our own journeys, and why it needs to be embraced and not feared, particularly in healthcare. Productivity and the impact of chronic conditions and another example of why it would be better to target support to those most in need.
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