“Throw the life jacket to the patient and sort out the price after they are safe,” says Rare Cancers Australia CEO

Pharma News: Leading national patient advocacy group and cancer charity, Rare Cancers Australia (RCA), is calling on the Federal Government and the pharma industry to act now to ensure Australians have faster access to the latest cancer treatments and technologies amidst the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Review.

“Whilst we have a good range of PBS funded medicines, there are increasingly long delays in new treatments being brought to Australia, and excruciatingly long delays in determining if and when they should be included on the PBS up to two years in many cases! This is precious time that cancer patients and many others with life threatening diseases cannot afford. In this time, sadly, many patients die without a ccess to the latest, life extending or lifesaving treatments,” Richard Vines, CEO,
RCA said.

“There is no more crushing news for a cancer patient to hear than ‘there is treatment that can help you, but it is not funded by the PBS.’ This means the cost to the patient could be up to and at times more than $100,000 per year. How does this happen in a rich country like Australia and how do we make it better?”

The Federal Government’s answer to this long standing issue of access is to examine the processes in place to determine what medicines and therapies are available in Australia through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and other government funded mechanisms such as Medicare through the HTA Review.

“This review is timely, if not overdue, for a number of reasons, including to address the trend of more effective and more targeted techniques being developed that come at a very high cost for very small or rare patient groups. We are also seeing the increasing emergence of small ‘one drug or therapy’ companies whose primary focus is supply to the US and Europe. In many of these cases these lifesaving treatments have no pathway to Australia or our patients,” Mr Vines explained.

“Like most things in life, we are talking about price for example, what is a fair price to pay for a therapy for a cancer patient? Currently, our HTA process looks primarily at the clinical impact of the therapy and compares it to therapies that are already available. If the new therapy increases life expectancy by six months then the new therapy is worth proportionally more under the HTA process. If it extended life by a year then an even higher price is justified.”

RCA’s most recently released report in conjunction with Canteen Counting the Cost: The true value of investing in cancer treatment poses the question; what else might we consider as value? If a treatment has fewer side effects and th e patient has a higher quality of life is that not valuable? If a patient and/or their carer can return to work to support their family and contribute to society is that not valuable? If a parent can extend their life and continue to help raise their child ren, is that not valuable and how do we assess it?

These are only a few of the important questions that must be consider ed and the HTA Review gives the Federal Government and industry a real opportunity to help define how we not only value medicines, but the lives of our most vulnerable Australians.

“Someone once described the current situation as having patients drowning in the ocean whilst government and pharmaceutical companies argue about the price of life jacket. Surely we can throw the life jacket to the patient and sort out the price after they are safe,” Mr Vines urged

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