KEY POINTS:
About 200,000 New Zealanders taking heart medication will have to change drugs or pay more for their prescriptions from July.
Government drug buyer Pharmac yesterday confirmed the cost of three-month prescriptions for Betaloc and Plendil, taken for high blood pressure and heart failure, would attract a surcharge of between $2 and $10 from July.
Pharmac medical director Peter Moodie said that was because the drug manufacturer AstraZeneca had increased the price of the drugs and Pharmac could not justify an extra $4 million a year on top of its existing subsidy.
Dr Moodie said patients now paid either $3 or $15 for the drugs, depending on their age, but from July, they would have to pay a surcharge of $2 to $10 if they wanted to keep taking them.
"There are alternative products that can be used and people need to talk to their doctor about that."
Most of the 200,000 patients affected were on Betaloc - only about 15,000 were taking the affected dosage of Plendil.
Pharmac's clinical advisory committee believed there were appropriate alternative drugs already subsidised.
Dr Moodie said the increase would have been about $4 million a year out of Pharmac's $600 million drug budget.
"Not only is it a decent chunk of the budget but what you have to think about with our budget is that the vast majority of that budget is for business as usual, for existing drugs, so when we have to pay an extra $4 million, what that's coming off is new drug investment," he said.
"That $4 million could well be used in the area of cancer or a number of other areas which are priority areas for us."
He acknowledged many of the affected heart patients were elderly, frail, and uncomfortable at the prospect of changing drugs.
"These are unfortunately vulnerable people and it's not a decision that we make lightly."
Betaloc was in a group of drugs called beta blockers and Carvedilol was a comparable drug for people taking it for heart failure while Plendil was a calcium channel blocker and isradipine had recently been added to Pharmac's list, Dr Moodie said.
They were both fully subsidised.
Dr Moodie said Pharmac had to "draw a line somewhere" in how much it was willing to pay for drugs.
Professor Evan Begg, of the Christchurch School of Medicine, told Radio New Zealand changing medications risked patients' conditions destabilising and Pharmac should continue to fully subsidise the drugs for existing patients.
- NZPA
