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The real worry down here the South Pacific is the threat to the Pharmaceutical schemes of Australia and New Zealand through changes in Drug patenting. Australia has the Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme, where the Australian Government becomes the sole purchaser of a particular drug for the entire country, who then subsidizes it out to the General Public. They lean heavily toward drugs that are out of Patent, so they buy generics, and there's always a discussion about cost vs benefit as it's a wide variety of drugs available then New Zealand at around six times the cost of New Zealand's system. New Zealand has the Pharmaceutical Management Agency, which has a board of doctors and pharmacoligists go "OK, next up we need a blood pressure medication that works this way. There's 8 on the market, we will choose Brand X.", who then put out a tender which is "Right, we need Y doses of blood pressure medication X over the next three years. Who will manufacturer it for us cheapest" This ends up being substantially cheaper then Australia, at the cost of far fewer drugs in the scheme for outside cases. These systems rely heavily on patents expiring, so the threat for patent extension, or "evergreening" (where a drug is re-patented through a minor change in delivery method, or the addition of a new chemical that doesn't substantially change the method of action) would cripple both systems and enable pharmaceutical companies to sell at full price. The fact that both sides of the Australian and New Zealand governments have not outright rejected these changes is extremely worrying.
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Jun 12, 2015 23:56
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 13:29 |
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