Kris Faafoi: Axing of prescription charge just what doctor ordered

Wednesday, 24 May 2023

National Party finance spokesperson Nicola Willis says her party would return a $5 co-payment to medicine prescriptions, after the Government promised to remove the fee in Budget 2023.

Kris Faafoi is a government and public relations specialist; a former Labour member of Parliament and a former Cabinet minister; and a former Press Gallery journalist. He is a regular opinion contributor to Stuff.

OPINION: Budget day sees the usual suspects fill the commentary space to analyse the detail of the annual opening of the books. However, this year I really wanted to know what someone in Cannons Creek, Porirua, thought about one of the headline-grabbing Budget announcements.

That someone is community hero Kas Govind, the local pharmacist, who has been serving the community in Porirua East for four decades. Over those years he has learnt a thing or two about what keeps his community healthy, and what keeps them ill.

For years, Kas has been a strong advocate for the prescription part-charge to be dropped. That’s because for many years he would put medicine that had been prescribed for his customers on a shelf, fully knowing many of his customers would not return to pick it up because of the cost.

That shelf is usually heaving with brown paper pharmacy bags. Each package a sure sign of someone who wanted to be healthy, being anything but.

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Cannons Creek pharmacist Kishor ‘Kas’ Govind has been a strong advocate for the prescription part-charge to be dropped.

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The scrapping of the prescription part charge in last week’s Budget was big news, and so it should have been.

Kris Faafoi: A University of Otago study strongly recommended “the $5 prescription co-payments be removed for those with high health needs and low incomes, or be scrapped entirely”.

Pharmacists like Kas around New Zealand will be happy that a barrier to good health will be removed, and not because it might be good for business (I will come back to this point), but it’s likely to be very good for his customers and for reducing demand on our hospital system.

Earlier this year a study out of the University of Otago’s Va’a o Tautai-Centre for Pacific Health found that people who did not have to pay for a prescription were less likely to be in need of hospitalisation and to spend fewer nights in hospital compared to those in the study who continued to pay the part-charge.

Sounds obvious, certainly to Kas. But it puts into context the strength of the announcement when it comes to policy, the public and politics.

The study strongly recommended “the $5 prescription co-payments be removed for those with high health needs and low incomes, or be scrapped entirely”.

This is what the Government has done at a cost of $619 million over four years. That’s a big chunk of change for a “no frills” Budget.

Kris Faafoi: I don’t think it’s fair to suggest or assume that it’s all tiddlywinks in dealings between ministers and their agencies. A degree of healthy tension is, well, healthy.

The Va’a o Tautai study suggested that it costs around $1000 a night to keep a patient in hospital. One of the main findings was there are likely to be massive savings via reduced hospital stays when cost is removed as a factor for Kiwis to access medicines. If the study is right, the simple maths could make this policy alone a game-changer for patients and the health system.

And here comes the politics. Earlier this year I wrote that the election environment would require politicians to be less political, to speak directly to the needs of people who were struggling to make ends meet.

Scrapping these charges for medicines meets that test. Yes, it has started a debate about who should be eligible for free prescriptions. But this, too, is a healthy thing in an election year. From the perspective of your local pharmacist, the fact that this is being debated is a win. Those who undertook the study at Otago University will think that too.

Labour needs to get its core vote out in October to give itself the best chance of holding on to power for a third term, and this announcement could be what the doctor ordered. Time will tell, because in another political twist, this policy is planned to start this July. So, the gauntlet has been thrown down to voters.

Away from the politics I want to see community pharmacists thrive. In recent years the proliferation of big box pharmacy services has put the likes of the local chemist under pressure.

We need the Kas Govinds of this world because they offer more than prescriptions, plasters and ointments. For many, the local chemist is the first health professional they might see if they’re unwell.

Many people turn up with a cough or cold and a keen-eyed pharmacist might send them to the GP because they’ve noticed that something doesn’t look right.

No disrespect to the big box players but from what I have seen, you’re unlikely to get that level of service from an outfit that is more interested in selling you cosmetics, vitamins or cologne.

Prescriptions are a big part of millions of Kiwis’ lives. Making them cheaper and more accessible so we can all actually take our medicine is good for the collective health of New Zealanders. It seems most political parties, to some degree, now agree on this.

When I popped in to see Kas earlier this year as I was in desperate need of insect repellent and sunscreen (yes, I do burn thank you very much), he was still hot on the issue.

I’m sure he’s happy the issue is now front and centre. Not for himself, but for the thousands of people who rely on him to stay healthy.

Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly stated the prescription part-charge would be removed in July 2024. (Amended, May 24, 2.58pm)