I don’t think there is any real issue hear. Companies will charge what they think people are prepared to pay. The bigger the profit they make the more it will encourage like minded companies to try even harder to find other cures for other forms of cancer so that they to can join the bonanza. 7% is neither hear nor there.

Who knows CSL may have put it to auction and Merck was the highest bidder in the US and the bid they made may have come in under what CSL was hoping for? They might be getting even more money from other countries in Europe? Maybe $500 - $600 a pop.

I am just glad that the break through has been made. Well done CSL and all others involved you deserve to be greatly reward for the many lives you will save.

I can't see the problem with CSL being able to recoup the research costs from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to the same level as a multi national pharma company.

I think its scandalous that Australian young women are denied a mass vaccination program by a Minister for Health who is more concerned about controlling women's fertility than about the health of Australian women.

Its time the god botherers realise that the majority of the Australian population just tolerate them. Most Australians want to be free from religious strictures to live to the best of their potential in our once secular society.

CSL are not recouping their research costs they are trying to charge the Govt. $30 more per course of vaccination than it costs them. CSL have a monopoly on Gardasil in Australia and this extra $30 may seem little but it will equate to hundreds of millions of dollars before we see a reduction in cervical cancer rates 25-30 years.

What other drugs without such a high profile will be knocked back because CSL has ripped this money off the PBS?

Steve Madden,

You say CSL have a monopoly over supply of Gardasil into the Australian market. Is it part of their deal to license Merck to produce the drug that they (CSL) will charge the same price for it as would Merck if it was selling into the Australian market?

Presumably Merck's cost structure in putting the drug on the market internationally is significantly more favourable than would be CSL's. Otherwise why would CSL not be exporting the drug in its own right? (I am assuming that CSL has, or could contract, the capacity to actually make the drug.) Given that CSL may be manufacturing the drug itself, there is nothing to say that their cost stucture may not oblige them to charge more than the US price less license cost to make the drug available here. In which case the license component of the price of Merck supplied Gardasil has nothing necessarily to do with the cost structure of CSL sourced Gardasil, and you cannot necessarily claim CSL are ripping off the PBS to the tune of $30 per course or any lesser amount.

Of course if the actual source of the Gardasil that CSL is supplying to the Australian market, under the monopoly arrangement you claim exists, is in fact Merck, then it may be vastly more than $30 per course that may be being ripped off from the PBS. I do not know the industry, but I observed the attempts of the US negotiators to have the PBS dismantled as a condition of the Australia US Free Trade Agreement. It was an unforgivably arrogant attempt at interference in Australian domestic affairs, and the utterly muted defence of the scheme from both sides of politics in Canberra was a national disgrace. The PBS ensures that the US suppliers of pharmaceuticals get paid in cold hard cash, stupids! As such a cash cow, it only raises the most profound suspicions that the continued existence of the PBS is feared because it might focus the motivation and the resources to really look into the pricing policy of suppliers.

SteveM, Nice try, I see where you were going and you had a reasonable goal – sadly however you missed the understanding of basic business ‘politics’, or is it economics - whatever, it just is a fact of life now.

The key issue here is that Gardasil is a registered product of MERCK, produced by them and sold and distributed by them throughout the world, including Australia, so they get to set the price (made under licence perhaps, but it is still their brand named drug – not CSL’s)

CSL may have undertaken considerable scientific research that allowed Gardasil to be manufactured. They may hold the licencing rights to the chemical compound Merck use. But the Truth is CSL would rather make 7% of the world wide sales of Gardasil at absolutely NO further outlay or production costs to themselves rather than make their own competing brand name product for all Australians to perhaps enjoy at a lower price (assuming CSL is capable of producing a small number of supplies to fill the Australian market) than Merck would try and undercut them for.

That’s the way of the world Steve – Aussie companies would rather sell out Australians (if it is in fact the case that they could manufacture a competitor to Gardasil themselves for less than the price Merck can??) in favour of an easy buck, than be humanitarians and make a cheap product to save lives here.

Maybe you should have a go at Coles and Woolies instead since they rip us off to the tune of billions of dollars a year on the price of fresh local and OS Produce merely because we Aussies are too stupid to pay a just a reasonable profit on those items and are prepared to pay the ludicrous rates of hundred’s and thousands of percent profit so that we all can buy ‘pretty looking’ fruit and veg and not have to eat anything with a blemish like our grandparents were happy to do if they could find any in their local greengrocer/corner store after the War.

'Drain

Wrong, only CSL has approval for gardasil in Australia with the TGA. It was CSL who applied for its listing on the PBS and they have the "marketing rights" in Australia and New Zealand.

I agree that the prices charged by Coles and Woolies are a rip-off but they are not asking for a 100% Govt subsidy for these goods. (conflict of interest - I do have shares in Coles-Myer)