The 'Dispatched' Podcast
BioPharmaDispatch - discussing the issues impacting the Australian biopharmaceutical and life sciences sectors with Paul Cross and Felicity McNeill.
Episodes
185 episodes
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review Podcast - 8 May 2026
In this week's episode, the focus is on the latest example of no progress on reform, the mindset and intransigence it reveals, the repeated pattern, and the early evidence that it would always end this way. Can it be an opportunity? Next week's...
The 'Dispatched' Podcast - Special Episode
In this special episode, the focus is on the official plan to force a 'consensus' on health technology assessment reforms through a process conducted in secrecy under the guise of ethics approval. The problem with running this policy process li...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 1 May
Tokenistic characterisations of patient engagement are no substitute for listening and empowering. The risk of government funding for organisations and how it can impact what they do, primarily because the government is just another vested inte...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 24 April
Another significant speech for the health portfolio that highlights the reform challenge and the importance of choices. A review announced in 2021 without an official response, and the reform of a major program announced with enabling legislati...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review' - 17 April
An unhinged reaction to the new pharmacy prescribing initiative in New South Wales, why Australia needs to be humble in any health system comparison with the US, and given that the Government sets and umpires the rules for reimbursing innovativ...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 10 April
Australia’s health system is overly bureaucratic, opaque, and misaligned, with reforms like the HTA Review slowing access rather than improving it. Decision-making prioritises institutional processes over patients, who remain largely excluded d...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review'- 2 April
In this week's episode, the discussion focuses on Health Minister Mark Butler's address at an event in Sydney and its invocation of history as the framework for pending negotiations over HTA reforms and PBS pricing. Also, strange comments by on...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review'- 27 March
A powerful patient story was overshadowed by a mindset that expects patients to simplify their needs and accept delays. Some proposed reforms risk entrenching these problems, while claims of having a 'world-class system' gaslight patients and s...
The 'Dispatched' Podcast - 20 March
How Australia’s health system is failing patients by prioritising process and cost control over timely access to treatment, forcing more to rely on compassionate access programs. HTA processes are slow, often dehumanising, and used by the gover...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review'- 27 February
In this episode, we examine funding uncertainty for genomic profiling through OMICO, structural tensions within the PBS and pharmaceutical supply chain, and broader concerns about how political and financial incentives shape health policy and b...
The Dispatched Podcast 'Week in Review' - 20 February
Australia’s system for deciding whether new health technologies are funded is too focused on contested models and not enough on real people and their needs. The lack of human consideration leads to long delays, avoidable suffering, and sometime...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review'- 13 February
Reflect on Susan Ley’s legacy as a former health minister, especially the 2015 PBS Access and Sustainability Package. She was treated rudely and unfairly, and that meaningful ecosystem reform has since stalled. Critique Senate Estimates, ...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 6 February
Mark Butler’s four 'pillars' on medicines policy and the argument that Australia prioritises low prices over preventing shortages and ensuring access. Do we need smarter, targeted incentives to address shortages that often reflect global challe...
The 'Dispatched' Podcast - Episode 2, Series 5
The Government has announced an additional $25 billion for public hospitals over five years, representing close to two PBSs, while NDIS spending is still rising by $1 billion every few months. Can anyone seriously still argue that there is no n...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review Podcast - 12 December
Not for the first time, some Australian politicians are in trouble over their use of very generous travel entitlements. We discuss why it matters for patients and why the claim that they are acting within the rules does not stack up.
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review'- 5 December
A turbulent round of Senate Estimates, highlighted by a heartbreaking exchange about a mother with two children battling Crohn’s disease. Officials suggested that the family seek compassionate access from companies or seek treatment at a public...
The 'Dispatched' Podcast - 30 November
In this week’s Dispatched Podcast, we unpack the AI Health Summit and agree it revealed a gap between institutional caution and the real-world pace of its adoption. The practical reality of the proposed ban on genetic testing for life ...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 31 October
Reform efforts can struggle because they focus on health systems at their strongest point rather than their weakest. Framing is a pernicious tool used to justify delays and denials. We argue that the uptake of GLP-1 therapies in the US is deliv...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review'- 17 October
We discuss what could be a significant policy shift in PBS decision-making, with clinical judgement backed by what is a 'common sense' outcome. It could be a new precedent, but only if all stakeholders demand clarity on the criteria so that it ...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 12 October
Has Senate Estimates devolved into an overly polite, time-sliced format that enables waffle, obfuscation, and endless questions taken on notice? Does this reflect weakened scrutiny? The responses provided revealed the truth of review processes,...
The Dispatched 'Week in Review' - 3 October
We open by marking Yom Kippur and a frank discussion before pivoting to the US 'MFN' drug-pricing moves, what they could mean for Australia’s PBS, and why institutional rigidity in HTA persists and is worsening. Medical research funding rhetori...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 26 September
On the Dispatched Podcast this week, we reflect on the erosion of public confidence in health decision-making. Former Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton’s admission that some COVID-19 measures were not strictly evidence-based ...
The 'Dispatched' Week in Review - 12 September
In this week’s episode, the Medical Services Advisory Committee’s rejection of adding Pompe disease to newborn blood spot screening is condemned. The decision is contemptuous, inhumane, and riddled with fabricated justifications based on made-u...