KEY POINTS:
New Zealanders' access to prescription medicines is at least as good as that of Australians, and is improving, says Pharmac acting chief executive Matthew Brougham.
The Researched Medicines Industry Association (RMI) today claimed that sweeping reforms in the way Australia funded pharmaceuticals highlighted how far behind New Zealand was lagging.
RMI association chairwoman Pippa MacKay said the New Zealand system was "depriving" patients of important and necessary medicines.
New Zealand was behind its neighbour because of a shortage of government funding and the method Pharmac employed in making decisions about which drugs it would fund.
However, government drug-buying agency Pharmac said the claims were "nonsense".
"New Zealanders' access to medicines is broadly comparable with Australia," Mr Brougham said.
New Zealand had funded 68 new medicines since 2000 (14 last year), and both prescription numbers and the number of medicines funded were rising significantly.
Access to prescription medicines in New Zealand was being further improved by reducing the contribution (co-payments) patients made.
Mr Brougham said the opposite was happening in Australia. Co-payments were now nearly $30 per prescription, compared with $3 in New Zealand.
Reports from Australia indicated the high cost was a significant barrier to many people picking up their prescriptions, he said.
Some drugs were funded in New Zealand ahead of Australia, and vice-versa.
New Zealand beat Australia in funding lantus (for diabetes), ezetimibe (for cholesterol) and glivec (for leukaemia), he said.
Mr Brougham described New Zealand's drug-funding system as "efficient", enabling increased access to medicines both in terms of volume (numbers of prescriptions written) and mix (numbers of medicines funded).
The Australian moves were designed to extract value from older (off patent) medicines to pay for new medicines, he said.
"The RMI appears excited about this happening in Australia - yet when Pharmac made the same move some 10 years ago the RMI opposed it.
"Pharmac has been extracting value from off-patent medicines to help fund new investments since 1996."
The New Zealand Government is developing a National Medicines Strategy, which is due to be released shortly.
The RMI wants to see the strategy increase government funding and improve access to medicines.
Despite an underspend of $20 million in its annual budget last year, Pharmac still restricted access to many important medicines for treating key diseases such as cancer and heart disease, Dr MacKay said.
- NZPA
