E-drug: USA pressure on Australia's affordable drugs scheme (cont'd)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
US Pharma Giants Issue their Instructions to the US Negotiators.
Members of the List who are interested in what the US is seeking
from Australia in relation to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
(PBS) will be interested to visit the following website:
http://www.phrma.org/international/resources/04.03.2003.353.cfm
<please reconstitute URL if it wraps>
In particular PhRMA is looking;
- to weaken the "overriding focus" of the PBAC on cost effectiveness
in determining listings
- remove reference pricing
- remove the mandatory requirements for pharmacoeconomic
cost-effectiveness studies
- prohibit stockpiling (of generics in the lead up to patent expiration)
and springboarding for export
Members of the list will recall that the US Trade Representative works
very closely with PhRMA in determining the US Government's trade
position. This has been particularly well documented in Oxfam
Briefing Paper #33 ("US bullying on drug patents: one year after
Doha") which is at
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/policy/papers/33bullying/33bullying.html
<please reconstitute URL if it wraps>
Dr. Ken Harvey
Project Manager - Electronic Prescribing - Decision Support
Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute (www.petermac.org)
Board Member, Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd. (http://www.tg.com.au)
Council Member, Australian Consumers Association
(http://www.choice.com.au)
Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health (http://www.latrobe.edu.au)
La Trobe University, Bundoora, 3086, Australia
Tel +61 3 9479 1750, Fax +61 3 9479 1783, Mob 0419 181910
k.harvey@latrobe.edu.au
--
To send a message to E-Drug, write to: e-drug@usa.healthnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@usa.healthnet.org
in the body of the message type: subscribe e-drug OR unsubscribe e-drug
To contact a person, send a message to: e-drug-help@usa.healthnet.org
Information and archives: http://www.essentialdrugs.org/edrug