An angry Northland cancer patient who is part of group lobbying for better access to publicly-funded drugs says the $200 million given to Pharmac in the Budget "isn't good at all".
Denise Lemmen of Whangārei said the reality was Pharmac would only get $40m for 2021/22 which may not all be used to fund new medicines as the agency independently decided how to use the money.
Lemmen was diagnosed with metastatic, stage four cancer, in 2018 and is taking Ibrance tablets that cost her $5850 a month until Pfizer funded the drug for her in July 2019 under an early access scheme.
Pharmac started funding Ibrance for all New Zealanders from April 2020.
She is part of Patient Voice Aotearoa that collected more than 100,000 signatures and presented their petition, which called for better access to publicly-funded drugs, to the Government about two weeks ago.