The issues

Belinda, a 34 year old mother of two small children has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and requires treatment with a new drug, Herceptin, which costs $60,000 per treatment, per year.

Drug companies claim they need to charge enough for their drugs to allow them to cover the costs of their research and development. This significantly increases the price of a drug. Without this research, though they claim that new and better medicines would not come onto the market and therefore would not be available to people in need.

The Federal Government is pressured by lobby groups to subsidise effective drug treatments by putting these drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS); making a $60,000 drug available to a dying person for possibly less than $100. The subsidy is made available through tax that has been collected from all working Australians.

There are many competing financial demands on the health system, especially as Australia's population ages and smoking, obesity and reduced activity levels in the community lead to lifestyle diseases such as lung disease or Type 2 Diabetes which can cost up to $12,000 per year for medication to maintain a reasonable quality of life - for what could be up to 40 more years.

What to do

Decide, before you begin any research, whether you think that all medical drugs should be available on the PBS to all Australians, so that regardless of a person's income they can have access to the latest treatments. This decision needs to be made for all Australians, even if the condition was caused by poor choices a person made about how to maintain their health.

Using the links below, look at both sides of the argument, and see if any of the sites help you to change your opinion. How did the information help you change your mind?

With your designated partner, discuss your final decision and why you may have changed your mind (and how were you helped to make that decision). See if you can come up with a shared answer. Now demonstrate the best arguments that helped you to be confident of your answer. Be prepared to present this shared answer with the whole class - particularly focus on what were the key points that influenced your decision.