[Ip-health] Eli Lilly challenge Australian PBS under FTA rules

[James Love]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Ken Harvey" <k.harvey@medreach.com.au>
Date: May 7, 2006 7:56:14 PM EDT
To: E-Drug <e-drug@usa.healthnet.org>
Subject: [e-drug] Eli Lilly challenge Australian PBS under FTA rules
Reply-To: Essential Drugs in English <e-drug@healthnet.org>

E-DRUG: Eli Lilly challenge Australian PBS under FTA rules
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Drug subsidy appeal to test new review

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/drug-subsidy-appeal-to-test-new-
review/2006/05/07/1146940413807.html

By Mark Metherell
May 8, 2006

AN AMERICAN drug company will challenge Australia's refusal to grant
prescription subsidies for an osteoporosis drug, in the first test of
review measures demanded by the US under the free trade agreement.

Eli Lilly is seeking a rethink of the Australian expert panel's
rejection of subsidies for its product, Forteo, a treatment costing
about $850 a month for patients at high risk of fractures because of
osteoporosis.

The company estimates that about 2000 patients would be eligible in
Australia for the subsidised drug, which would priced be under $30 for
general patients and less than $5 for those with concession cards.

Lilly's appeal request came as the Health Minister, Tony Abbott,
appointed a veteran bureaucrat, Linda Webb, as convenor of the
independent review process proposed under the free trade agreement.

The company has made four attempts to get the green light for inclusion
of Forteo on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, for the treatment of
men and postmenopausal women with severe osteoporosis.

Britain and six other European countries subsidise the drug, said a
company spokesman, Martin Palin.

But the Federal Government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee
rejected Eli Lilly's latest bid for subsidies, stating that on the basis
of the company's submission there was an "uncertain clinical benefit",
which resulted in "uncertain and unacceptable cost-effectiveness".

Mr Palin said that despite the company's four attempts over three years,
there remained "unresolved fundamental differences" between Lilly and
the committee with regard to the strength and interpretation of the
evidence available about the drug.

The absence of subsidies meant that most people who could not afford the
unsubsidised drug experienced "severe disruptions to their lives and in
some cases required hospitalisation, bed rest and rehabilitation".

Mr Palin said the price Lilly had suggested for Forteo to be listed on
the PBS was one of the lowest offered to any developed country.
---
copied in the public interest by

Dr. Ken Harvey
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
School of Public Health, La Trobe University
http://www.medreach.com.au
VOIP:  +61 (03) 9029 0634; Mobile +61 (04) 1918 1910

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---------------------------------
James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org / mailto:james.love@cptech.org /
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks."  Bill Walton