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Pharmaceuticals

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Health Minister Mark Butler agrees it is taking too long for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee to assess drugs. The Coalition says he’s taken too long to act.

The valid point about Australian medicines that pharma giants made to Trump

Australia’s peak medicines industry group says it takes 466 days for approved medicines to become subsidised. Health Minister Mark Butler agrees that it’s too long.

  • Natassia Chrysanthos

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme would not be negotated.

Australians’ medicines are about to become cheaper. Why would Trump target them?

Australians pay some of the lowest medicine prices in the world for a reason: our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Here’s how it works and why it’s being threatened.

  • Natassia Chrysanthos
Patients will be able to receive 60-day scripts from September, with the same maximum co-payment of $30.

Dutton under pressure to match PM’s pledge to drop medicine prices by $6.60

Labor will bring the patient co-payment for subsidised medicines down to $25 from $31.60 as it wages an election battle over healthcare.

  • Natassia Chrysanthos
Albanese and Trump

Big pharma’s plea to Trump to punish Australia for cheaper medicines

US medical giants say Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is an “egregious and discriminatory” program that Trump should target in the next wave of tariffs.

  • David Crowe
Donald Trump is set to unleash another wave of tariffs in early April.

Australia on alert over Trump attacks on cheaper medicines

The US president has already attacked Ireland’s pharmaceuticals industry. Australia fears our medicines could be next.

  • David Crowe and Millie Muroi
Left to right: Sigma Healthcare CEO Vikesh Ramsunder, Chemist Warehouse founders and brothers Sam Gance, Jack Gance, and CEO Mario Verrocchi.

‘50 years of toil, 50 years of grind’: Chemist Warehouse is now a $32 billion giant

The mega-merger with pharmaceutical distributor Sigma Healthcare has minted billions for the pharmacy chain’s three founders and spawned more than 100 millionaires, with their stakes worth between $5 million and $25 million.

  • Jessica Yun
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Dr George Rugarabamu, Amanda Handley and Brett Carter with Mark Sullivan (front), managing director of Medicines Development for Global Health in the centre.

A small team of Australian scientists won a rare drug approval – and upended the pharma system

Hundreds of thousands of doses of moxidectin – which treats a disease caused by a parasitic worm – are being given to patients, the result of an audacious strategy offering a new way to develop medicine for neglected populations.

  • Liam Mannix
Hundreds of medicines are in short supply including Hormone Replacement Therapies.

If Australia made more of its own medicines, we’d all feel better

Australia imports about 90 per cent of its medicine, and this makes us incredibly vulnerable to any supply disruption. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

  • Jennifer Martin
Any attempts to create “mirror life” should be stopped, according to the scientists who were trying to create it.

Scientists slam brakes on research that could lead to the perfect bioweapon

Potentially catastrophic risks to life as we know it have prompted dozens of eminent scientists to hit the brakes on their research.

  • Angus Dalton
The newly opened Moderna Technology Centre at Monash University in Clayton, Melbourne.

‘We don’t have a Team Australia approach’: Vaccine facility rejects plea for help

A request by NSW to access a taxpayer-funded Moderna mRNA facility was knocked back, raising more questions about how much value Australia is getting from the facility.

  • Liam Mannix and Paul Sakkal

Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/topic/pharmaceuticals-hnn