Pharmaceutical benefits in Australia and Sweden: Welfare policy and the cost of prescription drugs

Pharmaceutical benefits provide a stable framework within which consumers, prescribers, suppliers, pharmacists and other actors undertake transactions . The state in effect delivers a good that enhances individual autonomy. A major reason for the legitimacy enjoyed by pharmaceutical benefits in both Australia and Sweden is that these programs have strong attributes of unive rsalism (rather than targeting). Sweden's predominantly public health syste m allows greater scope for pharmaceutical policy innovation. Australia's Ph armaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), while historically resilient and effect ive, is now wedged precariously between traditional considerations of equit y and public health on the one hand, and constant pressure for increased ma rketisation on the other.