‘Fund Pharmac properly’: Health advocate’s countrywide journey to discuss medicine funding

How should Pharmac be dealt with?

Patient Voice Aotearoa’s My Life Matters Roadshow came to an end, culminating in a political debate in Auckland last week.

Chairperson Malcolm Mulholland travelled to 16 towns and cities countrywide, interviewing 25 patients and their whānau, and speaking to more than a thousand people about how poorly New Zealand does when it comes to the funding of modern medicines.

Mulholland says a two-tier health system was a common theme in his talks: one for the insured and another for the uninsured or, essentially, “one for the rich and another for the poor”.

“It’s not good, and our people are going to miss out as a result.

“We don’t have the means to self-fund a medication that may be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We also tend to not be insured. I would suggest as a result of a cost charge for premiums.

“Again, our whānau just can’t afford them and that is why we are in the predicament we are in.”

Consensus: Pharmac needs to change

He also gave an example of a whānau from Gisborne crossing the ditch to Australia to access better medical care, albeit at another cost.

“The one common factor that they had between them, apart from the fact they had to leave Gisborne and their whānau and go overseas, was that they missed their home like mad. Both were well entrenched within their taha Māori and that’s one thing that those other homes can’t offer them.”

The political debate, which included political MPs such as Labour’s Ayesha Verrall, National’s Dr Shane Reti and others ended in a somewhat clear consensus; Pharmac needs to change.

“I think it’s also interesting that we had two different approaches from the two health spokespeople from Labour and National. Labour sees its role as being more hands-off while Shane Reti is more about being hands-on.

“He wanted to override some of the decisions that Pharmac were making. That was very clear from the debate.”