The 'Dispatched' Podcast

We discuss this week's interview with the HTA review reference committee chair and answer your questions, including whether the denigration of a journalist and patients is unique to New Zealand's Pharmac and why annual elections for industry association boards might be a bad idea.

Not all listeners were happy with our suggestion the current health technology assessment review is not the first 'comprehensive' process in the past 30 years. We are answering that question and have produced a list of between 40 and 50 similar processes since 1993.  It matters because it provides valuable lessons and demonstrates the connection between a review in 2023 and previous processes.

This week's podcast discusses what history tells us about the pre-conditions for change driven by non-government stakeholders - there are few. Are these pre-conditions evident today, or will another policy process end badly? Importantly, there is a way forward in an exclusionary process shrouded in secrecy, but history counts because it provides all the lessons.

A  special week in review recorded in New Zealand with election candidate and former industry executive Todd Stephenson. We were lucky to join Mr Stephenson and ACT leader David Seymour on the campaign trail in Wanaka and Queenstown. We discuss the range of issues impacting the election, including the political and policy focus on Pharmac.

A special guest joins the podcast to discuss the lost opportunity to celebrate a significant anniversary for the PBS and even reshape perceptions of the program. The government has also released its Final Budget Outcome, revealing strong growth in pharmaceutical spending and a problem with invoicing companies for rebates.

The entitlement challenge, secret policy processes, and why they matter. We also discuss why Budget forecasts for PBS spending have minimal use - what matters is the actual spend that reflects the addition of new medicines - and how the combination of events has become an indicator of change.

Two PBS 'demonstrations' in Canberra this week -  different tones but the messages were basically the same. The complex period ahead for the PBS is reflected across the health portfolio. The raft of reviews launched by the Albanese Government since its election will start to land containing a raft of recommendations that could trigger fierce fights between stakeholder groups.

What are the wider implications of the negotiation for a new Community Pharmacy Agreement, to take effect on 1 March 2024, and can another secret policy process deliver for patients? Another managed release of information on the international HTA collaboration reveals an additional 'fragment' on its activities.

The 2023 IGR has reinforced the longstanding isolation of Budget investment in health and new therapeutic technologies as 'costs' that must be managed. It has also acknowledged the challenge of forecasting future spending beyond the short term. We discuss how the IGR and its focus on investment in health as a cost will frame the raft of current review processes.

This week's discussion concerns transparency, or the lack of in policy development processes, and how it leads to highly curated outcomes that rarely benefit public health programs and the people they are designed to serve.