RealClearHealth: For Two Years, Australia Failed People With Cystic Fibrosis; It Can’t Happen Again

By: Gunnar Esiason

“Governments around the world have withheld access to life-changing medications for people with cystic fibrosis (CF) for years in the name of being hawkish on drug pricing. These countries allow bureaucrats to dictate which drugs are “worth it” but do so based on demonstrably flawed calculations of value. Patient communities must hold them accountable; their bad math and delay tactics cost lives and health.

Trikafta, a drug that corrects the underlying cause of CF, was approved in the US at the end of 2019. The drug is nothing short of a miracle. It slows the condition that has historically suffocated patients with thick sticky mucus in our airways by the time we enter our early thirties.

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Despite the benefits thousands of Americans experience from the drug, Trikafta wasn’t approved in the United Kingdom until August 2020 or made widely available in Canada until the Fall of 2021.”