Medicines New Zealand
AUTHOR: Judy Turner
Beneath the smog created by the Electoral Finance Bill in December UnitedFuture launched another major policy achievment as part of our Supply and Confidence agreement with the Labour led government. This is the result of two years hard work by Hon Peter Dunne along with Ministry of Health officials.
Up till this point we just had Medsafe who approved medicines for use in NZ and PHARMAC who were originally set up to purchase cheap generic medicines to keep our expenditure on medicines down. Over the years PHARMAC, in the absence of any overarching and strategic planning by successive governments, took it upon themselves to plug the gapping whole created by the absence of policy and changed from merely being a purchasing agent of the government to a pharmaceutical policy driver. Can't blame them for that.
But the situation was hugely unsatisfactory.
In just two years Peter has done what many other countries have taken as long as 15 to do .... bring together all the key stakeholders from pharmaceutical companies to health consumer groups and then using the feedback they all gave, developed a medicines system for NZ that will
* deliver quality medicines that are safe and effective
* provides access for all NZ'ers to the medicine they need
* ensures that medicines are used effectively
If you think back over the last few years to the number of media stories about ordainary Kiwis losing subsidised access to asthma inhalers, cholestoral medicines, heart pills, and the like due to unyeilding policy decisions by budget driven beauracrats then you will quickly realise how much we needed this work to be done.
A public health system will always require rationing and prioritising. Determining the right level of investment in medicines versus other health services is a matter health officials all around the worls struggle with.
What we do need is to have confidence that in NZ these decision are made in a principled way and that all stakeholders including consumers like you and I get to contribute to the decision makeing process.
Well done Peter!