Medications & PBS

[Guffy]

G'day friends! A quick question for the Aussies. Now, I'm getting closer to treatment, though hopefully it's still far away. But now I'm thinkin' about it more, a question occurred to me for the first time. How expensive is it? Are all the drugs subsidised on the PBS? Thanks, guys. Peace and strength!

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

Hi Guffy,

All CLL treatments approved for PBS coverage are treated no differently than any other PBS medications, including protection through the relevant Medicare Safety Net thresholds servicesaustralia.gov.au/wh...

The challenge we've faced (and helped through by past support through members of this community), is having the newer targeted therapies approved under the PBS. Australia has a Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee which meets a couple of times a year to review new medications for addition to the PBS. They encourage submissions from private individuals and use those in their deliberations. Understandably, they are looking for evidence that a candidate medication provides a better patient outcome at a similar (i.e. the drug company needs to be prepared to negotiate sufficiently) cost. When drug companies couldn't point to a clinical trial comparing their offering with an Australian approved CLL treatment, that dramatically slowed the approval process.

The good news as posted by my Aussie co-admin CLLerinOz , is that zanubrutinib was recently approved as a first line treatment for CLL and venetoclax for re-treatment.

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Prior to this, we had to have 17p del or mutated TP53 to qualify for a targeted therapy, even if we were unmutated IGHV and unlikely to achieve a reasonable length remission on BR or FCR.

I hope your treatment is indeed far off, but at least you have the timing right

Neil

[Guffy in reply to AussieNeil]

Thanks Neil. That's awesome. And thanks for all you do for this community, keeping us informed and encouraged.🤗