This is a bloody joke!
The Government on Tuesday announced it would be launching a review into Pharmac, but its total budget wouldn’t be part of that. Instead it will only look at how it performs against its objectives, concerns around transparency, how quickly it makes decisions and whether they are equitable.
If any review of Pharmac ignores the budget, the entire thing is a sham!
We all love the bulk buying power of Pharmac, but t hasn’t been given the extra funding to be able to ensure Kiwi’s can gt the latest medicines for a huge number of diseases.
The problem with Pharmac is that it hasn’t ben given the extra funding it needs to be able to make that next leap to ensure those new medicines are available, instead they have used a utilitarian approach which ignores a huge swathe of the NZ population who require more than hip replacements and bog standard medicine.
I’ve had the privilege of knowing Malcolm Mulholland. since MANA days, and his fight to force the Pharmac budget up is righteous.
To call for a meaningless review that focuses on the symptoms and not the disease is spineless politics.
We deserve better than this whitewash.
You would think that at a time when Pharmac’s cost cutting mindset may have contributed to suicides that revising its budget made sense.
Apparently this Government are more focused on keeping the Wellington Bureaucrats happy than sick Kiwis.
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So six people are being paid six figures each ( presumption but I bet I’m on the money) to what exactly? re-design the logo?
yes it is nothing more that a sop.
LABOUR DIDN’T WANT A REVIEW .
They are only having one because all the other parties boxed them into a corner.
Thank you Martyn for calling a spade a spade.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE2103/S00011/statement-and-faqs-re-pharmac-review.htm?
A political review ordered by dumb politicians in government thinking they’re smart politicians to ensure a box has been ticked to look like they care, changing nothing. Jacinda’s government has an rather deceitful little theme running here.
Frittering money away on facades like this won’t help anyone but clever politicians and yet that wasted money could have gone toward Pharmac.
Pharmac was once a good idea that has become, through budget starvation, a hindrance to public health.
It’s the budget. End. Of. Story. End of enquiry.
Dead right and the mere Fact labour took $200 million in Pharmac savings and used it for the nurses pay rise stinks to high heaven then in the next budget added medical devices to the pharmac budget and made a song and a dance about increasing the pharmac budget by $200 million is as deceitful as you can get and in the mainstream media was a word said. Make sure you read the scoop link folks . It is nothing but a review without having a review.
here is the lowdown and the scoop link.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE2103/S00011/statement-and-faqs-re-pharmac-review.htm?
While not wanting to undermine Martyn’s point about Pharmac and its funding, your comment appears a bit self-focused Frank. Yes, you may be able to afford your heart medication but a large swath of the population couldn’t afford that, or other life enhancing and often essential medication. One only has to consider the comments of chemists who are placed in a bind when patients can’t afford surcharges. Sometimes, this is discovered when prescriptions are already made up, so have to be disposed of. That aside, would your heart pills still be affordable if Pharmac didn’t exist to militate against big pharma’s rorting ways?
The simple answer is increased taxation. This should be met by those who can most afford it but don’t seem to pay their share.
It is a challenge getting one’s head around your logic Frank. Since Pharmac is funded from ‘the giant slosh fund and gets spent on shit’, how much of its ‘income’ would then be spent on means testing using your model. With such a vast array of personal and financial circumstances, drug types, from cheap to exorbitantly priced, and a need to make sure that means testing is equitable, would there be any change for the ‘outlier’ cases that currently receive less than optimal service? By extension, would you also apply the same means testing to all health services?
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