13 December 2018 - The high number of new listings on the PBS in 2018 serves to debunk Bill Shorten's claim that the current Government is stripping money out of health care.

With the publication of the final issue of the Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits for 2018, it is now possible to determine and analyse the number of major new listings on the PBS for this year.

The analysis reveals the following in terms of new PBS listings:

• 19 new medicines
  
• 1 new gene therapy
  
• 30 new indications
  
• 7 new combination products
  

Of these 57 major new listings, 18 are for cancer.

This analysis does not consider new NIP and LSDP listings.

This is a record number of major new PBS listings in a calendar year; a comparison with previous years (including the years when the ALP was in government), will be published in a future issue of MAESTrO Daily.

This analysis further demonstrates the massive gulf between Australia and New Zealand in terms of subsidised access to new medicines (57 versus 10).