Australia’s PBS must ‘absolutely’ be protected in trade talks, says Make America Healthy Again medical adviser Aseem Malhotra
The chief medical adviser to Make America Healthy Again campaign has defended Australia’s PBS, as the Trump administration comes under pressure to drag the pharmaceuticals program into tariff negotiations.
The new chief medical adviser to the Make America Healthy Again campaign group has leapt to the defence of Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, insisting medicines must remain affordable, as the Trump administration comes under pressure to drag the program into tariff negotiations.
Australia’s PBS caps the price of medicines on the scheme at $31.60 for consumers and must “100 per cent, absolutely” be protected in trade negotiations, MAHA Action medical chief and British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra said.
“All medicines need to be affordable for the regular person,” he told The Australian.
Dr Malhotra, who describes the pharmaceutical industry as “psychopathic”, has direct communication with both Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya, and could be influential in convincing US policymakers to keep the PBS out of trade talks.
In a bid to pressure big pharma to shift manufacturing and investment to the US, President Donald Trump has threatened to impose import tariffs as high as 200 per cent on the industry.
In turn, the pharmaceutical lobby in the US for months has been pushing Mr Trump to use trade negotiations as a tool to make changes to the PBS, which would drive up the price of medicines in Australia.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America – which represents the US’s biggest drug manufacturers – argues US products face a system that “undervalues new, innovative medicines”, and Mr Trump should “leverage ongoing trade negotiations” to change the scheme.
During the election campaign Anthony Albanese declared the $18bn PBS, providing 930 different medicines, was “not for sale”, and vowed to lower the cap to $25 in his second term.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers this month insisted the PBS would be safeguarded in tariff negotiations, saying it was “not something that we’re willing to trade away or do deals on”.
“We see the PBS as a fundamental part of healthcare in Australia. We’re not willing to compromise the PBS. We’re not willing to negotiate or trade away what is a really important feature of the health system,” Dr Chalmers said.
Dr Malhotra, 47, is a leading critic of big pharma and represents a growing contingent inside Mr Trump’s base that believes more needs to be done to crackdown on the industry’s influence over health policy.
He believes pharmaceutical companies are “pathologically self-interested to make money” through a business model that aims to “get as many people taking as many pills for as long as possible”.
“The evidence tells us that you can have a much more efficient, high-quality healthcare system and much lower cost income at the moment, because a lot of the costs are because of excessive prices of drugs and a lot of waste in the system for unnecessary investigations, unnecessary treatments,” he said.
“What I work on, and what we need to do, is basically improve quality care at lower cost.”
Dr Malhotra has been panned by leading Australian specialists for his views on Covid-19 vaccines and belief that statin medication to lower cholesterol is being overprescribed.
He said doctors, mainly in the US, should be stripped of any financial incentive to prescribe medications.
“To me, that is unethical,” he said.
In 2015 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ordered Medicines Australia to implement a new code of conduct requiring drug companies to publicly disclose doctors to whom they provided payments and the amount paid.
Trade Minister Don Farrell on Friday defended the PBS, saying Australia would “not compromise our fundamental values and interests”, despite the decision to allow US beef imports.
“Australia is the land of the ‘fair go’, we value social justice, fairness, inclusion and equality,” Senator Farrell said.
“Programs like the PBS, which are at the heart of the health and wellbeing of our country, will never be up for negotiation under an Albanese Labor government.”
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