It may have taken a month to get there, but the Government has fulfilled its pre-election promise to fund new cancer drugs. It is committing $604 million to fund 54 new medicines, including up to 26 cancer treatments. National ’s commitment to fund 13 specific cancer drugs hasn’t been fully met with up to seven listed in its 2023 policy included in the funding package with the others replaced by “alternatives just as good or better”, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti said.
It’s hoped the promised cancer drugs will be rolled out within the next year and a half – with the first becoming available in October. Reti estimated the new treatments will benefit about 175,000 people in the first year. University of Auckland Professor, Dr Paula Lorgelly, told The Front Page the National Party should never have promised funding in the first place.
“As soon as you’ve indicated that you want to fund a drug then that company now knows that Pharmac won’t be hard-price negotiating with them, right? “It’s like if you want to buy a used car. We already know we want to buy it, but we’re not going to tell the used car salesperson what we want to pay for it straight up. We’re going to start negotiating.
“You don’t show your hand in that situation, and what the Government did is it showed its hand and it left Pharmac in that really precarious situation, and the only [beneficiary] was going to be the pharmaceutical industry. “It may be costing us more than if they had ins.