Alice Downey | Health Editor

Experts say the government is spending too much on pharmaceuticals. Image: impactlab

Experts at the 3rd Annual Preventative Health Summit in Sydney yesterday, slammed the Australian government’s funding of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) saying the money could be much better spent.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme which provides subsidised prescription drugs to Australian residents costs the government more than $A5 billion a year to run.

Leonie Segal, an economics professor at the University of South Australia and member of the Preventative Health Taskforce, said that it would be cheaper and more effective for the government to invest more money in prevention rather than treatment.

“They [the government] still keep supporting the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee as if that’s doing a wonderful job but it’s basically a license for the pharmaceutical companies to print money, frankly.”

Whilst Professor Segal acknowledged that such medications were vital for the treatment of disease and that subsidising them is necessary, she said that the money could be used to prevent the diseases in the first place.

“If there’s a bucket of money to address child and adolescent mental health, why is 95% of it going to pharmaceutical companies?” Professor Segal said.

Craig Bosworth, Strategy Director at international healthcare company Healthways which has partnered in Australia with leading health insurer HCF said yesterday that the most popular drugs on the PBS are mainly for managing conditions that are entirely preventable.

“The top ten prescriptions per year are all for chronic disease. Cholesterol, Reflux, Cholesterol, Blood Pressure.”

Due to the speed of politics, Professor Segal said that the government values immediate health gains of treatment over the delayed health gains that can be achieved by prevention.

She believes that the government is too interested in the ‘rule of rescue’ and should be looking at health policies for both treatment and prevention.

“What we need are policies which will support a much more holistic approach to care of the individual,” she said.

One of the major preventative areas that are identified as requiring more funding is mental health services for youth.

“The prevalence of child abuse and neglect is so scary…In South Australia, 50% of indigenous children will have a child abuse notification at some stage,” Professor Segal said.

Professor Kerin O’Dea, the chair for the NHMRC’s Prevention and Community Health Committee believes that drugs like tobacco and alcohol are used by many as a way of coping with other more deeply set problems.

“Studies show there’s an extraordinarily high relationship between early childhood depravation through abuse and neglect in particular which feeds into mental and physical health, and the adoption of harmful behaviours,” she said.

Professor O’Dea said that issues such as abuse and alcoholism need to be addressed at the community and family level in order to prevent chronic disease down the line.