‘Life or death’: New survey reveals the health issue that’s weighing on voters’ minds

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Simeon Brown and Ayesha Verrall are gearing up for an election year that will have a strong focus on healthcare and medicines funding.

Survey results exclusively released to Stuff detail how important health and medicines spending could be in deciding the next government. Nicholas Jones reports.

An election year survey shows a big majority of voters rank health as the most important sector for government funding - and also details their worries about access to modern medicines.

The results from the research conducted for the pharmaceutical lobby group Medicines NZ - shared exclusively with Stuff - show a third of respondents say their vote in the looming election would be strongly influenced by an improvement in medicine access.

Asked which sector was the most important for government funding, 55% said health, followed by economic development (15%), infrastructure (8%), and education (7%).

A lack of access to modern medicines and debate about Pharmac's budget has been a major political focus.

Medicines NZ lobbies for its members, including some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies - Pfizer, Merck, MSD, Roche and AstraZeneca, amongst others.

It used the market research company Perceptive to conduct an online survey of a nationally representative sample of 1000 New Zealanders, done from March 25 to April 9. Another data source was an omnibus survey of 1000 people, run from March 17 to 31.

That found strong support for more investment in medicines, the supply of which is negotiated by the drug-buying agency Pharmac. This included:

* 43% of respondents said the Government should be funding medicines “much more”, 38% opted for “a little more”, with 13% saying “about the same”, 4% didn’t know, and 2% wanted less spending.

* Asked how NZ’s access to modern medicines compared to other developed countries, 44% said it was somewhat worse, 17% much worse, 32% the same, 5% somewhat better, and 2% much better. Compared to 2025 polling, 11% more people thought access is worse.

Medicines NZ has a vested interest in securing more spending on medicines, but says the survey results are methodologically robust and reveal the public’s view.

* 33% of respondents said their vote in the upcoming election would be strongly influenced by an improvement in medicine access (a dip from 36% in 2025 polling), and the same proportion was aware of someone in their social circle having to pay for unfunded medicine.

* People were also asked which areas within health spending were most important to them. Hospital and specialist services were nominated by 37%, followed by general practice services (23%), access to medicines (16%) and infrastructure improvements (9%).

A final question was, “if you or someone you know were diagnosed with the following disease or condition, how confident are you that you, or they, could access the best available medicine in New Zealand”.

People were least confident about medicines access for rare diseases (11% were very or extremely confident), cancer (23% very or extremely confident), obesity (24%), arthritis (24%), followed by cardiovascular/heart diseases (34%), and diabetes (39%).

Medicines New Zealand chief executive Dr Graeme Jarvis.

Dr Graeme Jarvis, chief executive of Medicines NZ, said the results clearly showed the public were aware that “we are not measuring up to other countries and that perception is getting worse, not better”.

Asked if part of the problem was the high prices demanded by pharmaceutical companies, Jarvis said other countries undertook a cost-benefit analysis on medicines, as New Zealand did.

“Other OECD countries have similar public health procurement systems and processes - they just choose to do a better mix of public health investment into modern medicines. Overseas Governments see modern medicines as a valuable and effective part of the health system.”

Political reaction: ‘lights are flickering’

Health Minister Simeon Brown said the Government knew how important healthcare was to Kiwis, which was why “we have made a record investment in healthcare - allocating one in every five taxpayer dollars to this priority”.

Act Party leader and Associate Health Minister David Seymour.

“This funding is strengthening frontline services, growing the workforce, and upgrading critical infrastructure so Kiwis can access timely, quality care … we are committed to fixing the basics and building the future, and will continue investing to ensure our health system meets the needs of New Zealanders.”

Dr Ayesha Verrall, Labour health spokesperson, said the survey results reflected the fact that “getting healthcare under Christopher Luxon’s government is harder and more expensive”, including because Labour’s free prescriptions policy had been scrapped.

“National’s last Budget only gave the health system enough funding to keep the lights flickering and people are rightly concerned by this. The Government has made cuts to the health workforce and implemented a hiring freeze, failed to meet targets and won’t hire our graduate nurses so we’re losing them overseas.

“They’ve given tax breaks to tobacco companies and landlords while 650,000 people can’t afford to see their family doctor, and many end up in emergency departments as their health gets worse. That’s not good enough.”

Verrall said Labour’s capital gains tax policy would help fund improved healthcare, starting with three free GP visits a year.

David Seymour, who as Associate Health Minister has responsibility for Pharmac, told Stuff, “in each budget I push for more medicine funding, and so far the annual budget has increased by over half a billion dollars”.

“With that money, Pharmac has made 133 decisions to fund or widen access to medicines. This includes decisions on 46 cancer medicines. Over 360,000 patients have benefited,” says Seymour, the Act Party leader.

“I have also changed Pharmac’s culture. Instead of accepting and managing a fixed budget, Pharmac now pushes for more money on the basis it will save elsewhere. I can’t say whether they have succeeded in this budget, that will be revealed in two weeks.”

Patient Voice Aotearoa chair Malcolm Mulholland.

Frustration with medicines funding “is completely understandable”, Seymour says, “but for the first time in memory, we are headed in the right direction.”

Green Party spokesperson for health, Hūhana Lyndon, says New Zealanders can see what’s happening in the health system, and are telling politicians the same thing - “fund the basics properly”.

“Pharmac does good work. The problem is how little it has to work with. New Zealand spends just 4.9% of its public health budget on medicines, against an OECD average of 13.3%,” Lyndon told Stuff.

“We're sitting at almost three times below where comparable countries are. That gap gets paid for by patients, by whānau scraping together money for unfunded medicines, and by a hospital system picking up illnesses that could have been prevented.

“Properly funding medicines is preventative healthcare. It's how we ease the pressure on emergency rooms and keep people well for longer.”

Patients ‘just asking to be average’

Dr Malcolm Mulholland, chair of Patient Voice Aotearoa, a collective of patients, families and charities who campaign for better access to medicines, told Stuff the country’s spend on medicines as a percentage of its GDP was near the bottom of the developed world.

“We're not asking for every medicine to be funded. We're just asking to be average with the rest of the developed world, and at the moment, we're so far behind that average it's just not funny. That's why we are seeing people having to self-fund medicines by going through Give-a-little.

“For many people, it's a case of life or death, and they have to go through that sadly far too common conversation with their family - ‘Do I leave my family in debt, or do I simply die earlier than others?’ That's one hell of a conversation to be had.”

Mulholland - who has no financial relationship with Medicines NZ and was independently approached by Stuff for comment - began his advocacy after his late wife, Wiki, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 2018.

Attitudes had definitely changed since then, he said - from politicians saying “nothing to see here, Pharmac is the envy of the world”, to “we know we’ve got a problem”.

“But neither side has really come up with the solution about how they intend to increase Pharmac funding so that we are average with the rest of the world. That's the missing part. I appreciate we've got a depressed economy, but politicians still make decisions about where we should spend our tax dollars … it is a question of priorities.”

Mulholland said there’s “certainly an argument for the drug companies bringing their prices down”. Pharmac’s negotiated prices are not public, but he understood, broadly speaking, prices paid were often among the lowest in the developed world.

“Because they know how constrained our funding is with Pharmac. One could say, ‘Maybe we are doing okay in terms of what we’re paying’. The flipside to that, of course, is it takes a horrific toll on patients [whose medicines aren’t yet funded].”