This story first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission
New cancer drugs should be available in the next three months, but it could be more than a year before all the newly-funded treatments are on the market.
The government has committed $604 million over four years in extra Pharmac funding to cover up to 54 new medicines, including 26 cancer drugs.
Ministers scrambled to fix National’s broken election promise after it failed to fund 13 specific cancer treatments in last month’s Budget, infuriating and upsetting patients.
Health Minister Shane Reti said some of the newly-funded drugs would be available from October or November, from then the rest will roll out over the following 12 months.
The money was a pre-commitment against next year’s Budget, and was separate to the $5.48b over four years pre-committed to Health NZ Te Whatu Ora from Budget 2025, as signalled alongside this year’s Budget.
At yesterday’s announcement, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon acknowledged that Pharmac was the best way to fund the promised cancer treatments.
Previously, the government had considered equipping a seperate agency or directing Pharmac to fund the specific drugs National campaigned on.
“It was an attempt to get 13 cancer drugs that weren’t available to New Zealanders by essentially working outside the Pharmac system. As we came to government, it became pretty obvious we’ve got a good model, why would we want to create a second model, and it’s important that we could actually embed it inside the Pharmac model.”
Asked if he would personally apologise to the patients and family affected by the delay and failed communication, Luxon said the government had already done so.
The Health Minister offered an apology and admitted communication could have been better.
“There was a vaccum. We didn’t give a pathway or an explanation as to why we weren’t ready to make more formative announcments at Budget, that we wanted to get this right, we wanted to make sure we had implementation capacity, we wanted to make sure we could bring together a package that lands today that benefits 175,000 New Zealanders.”
Reti said that was what the government would do differently if it could.
Opposition reacts
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins welcomed the increase in drug funding and said it was sensible to continue giving extra funding to Pharmac.
But he said the government’s fumble over its cancer drug election promise should not have been necessary to make it happen.
“It shouldn’t have taken all of that anguish, all of that grief, all of that campaigning to get to this point. They should have done this in the budget, which was when they indicated previously they were going to do it. They shouldn’t have created the huge uncertainty that they created.”
Hipkins said it is hypocritical for the government to take money for cancer drugs from next year’s budget.
“It’s another example of the fact that Nicola Willis’ pre-election rhetoric isn’t matched by her post election reality. She talked about the fact that the previous government was borrowing too much money and now she’s borrowing more money than we ever did, except for in 2020 when we were at the height of the pandemic.
“She said we were running two bigger deficits, now she’s running even bigger deficits. She said that we shouldn’t pre spend the operating allowance from the next budget, she’s already spent $150m from the operating allowance from the next budget, only three weeks after they delivered their first budget.”
Hipkins said it was a harmful mistake for National to campaign on funding specific drugs.
“Ultimately, politicians specifying which drugs should be funded and making specific commitments to funding those drugs is the wrong thing for politicians to do.”
