Interview AMA President Dr Bill Glasson and ANU's Dr Tom Faunce, with Alex Kirk, ABC Radio 'The World Today' - USFTA and the pharmaceutical benefits scheme featuring

COMPERE: While the free trade deal with the United States has been signed in Washington, the wrangle about what it really means for Australia's unique health system is heating up.

Supporters of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme want the FTA to be scrapped, but have come up with a fallback plan to protect the PBS, as Alexandra Kirk reports from Canberra.

ALEX KIRK: Two parliamentary inquiries are in the process of dissecting the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement signed in Washington this week.

Despite repeated Government assurances, from the Prime Minister down, that Australia's subsidised prescription medicines scheme is not at risk, a study by two former members of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and legal and medical academics says the free trade deal should be scrapped.

TOM FAUNCE: Well our first position is that it should be scrapped. I mean, it's a disastrous agreement.  It's going to raise Australian drug prices absolutely... there's no doubt. All our research, and anybody's research, shows that drug prices will rise by at least a third.

ALEX KIRK:  Dr Tom Faunce, one of the authors, who's a senior lecturer at the ANU's medical school and a lecturer, too, in law.  For him, political reality has dawned. He says there's a fallback position if the forces in favour of the FTA prove to be too great.

TOM FAUNCE: Our first position is - for goodness sake, it's going to be in Australia's interest to walk away from this, but if we can't walk away from it, let's at least try and protect our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

ALEX KIRK: Dr Faunce wants to see an exchange of letters added to the FTA that would protect the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

He says there is a precedent set by the Americans themselves who wanted further clarification before implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement back in 1993.

TOM FAUNCE: The interpretive provisions at the beginning of Annexe 2C should include an unqualified statement of the importance of universal access to affordable essential medicines.

The second principle is that any group established under the treaty to look at the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the Medicines Working Group, all the review mechanisms, should have on it public health experts - independent public health experts.

The third important change is that any review process set up shouldn't have the power to overturn Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee decisions, and should have the capacity to look at both 'yes' and 'no' decisions.

In other words even if you've, if they've agreed to list the drug, they should be able to revisit whether or not we're still getting adequate effectiveness and affordability from that decision.

ALEX KIRK: And there'd be a couple of other clarifying principles to iron out what Dr Faunce sees as ambiguities in the FTA, which he says leave the PBS vulnerable.

TOM FAUNCE: There should be across the board transparency, so not just the sort of transparency the pharmaceutical companies are asking for, but complete transparency. So every document that a pharmaceutical company puts up to get its drug approved should be available to the public on the web.

And further, the last one is that there should be a greater effort made to protect the capacity of generic manufacturers in Australia to rapidly springboard their cheaper products onto the market at the expiry of a patent.

ALEX KIRK: The head of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Bill Glasson, says doctors support anything that clearly protects the PBS and guarantees Australians access to affordable high quality drugs. So the AMA is backing Dr Faunce's proposal.

BILL GLASSON: The greatest pressure on our health system at the moment is the pressure on the PBS, which is spiralling out of control.

And I think that any further pressure that the Free Trade Agreement puts on that will simply mean that you and I in the street will be paying more and more for drugs and therefore that will ultimately affect our access to those drugs.

ALEX KIRK: While Labor is yet to decide if it supports the FTA or not, the Federal Government says an amendment to the FTA is not needed because there's nothing that will increase drug prices in Australia or change the way the PBS works.

The office of the Trade Minister Mark Vaile says Australia was able to ensure the detail of how the free trade deal is implemented, especially as it relates to prescription medicines, is at Australia's discretion, not America's, and they say this guarantees the protection of the PBS.

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