‘Out of the chaos comes good’: $604m cancer funding boost welcomed
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Malcolm Mulholland has been face-to-face with death. His wife, Wiki, died of breast cancer, and years later he was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.
In his work at Patient Voice Aotearoa, he has advocated for many who have died waiting for their treatment to be publicly funded. Despite this, he still has an easy laugh.
It came on Monday, after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon revealed plans to massively boost cancer spending by $150 million a year, going further than his election promise to fund 13 specific life-prolonging cancer treatments.
The package will fund up to 54 more new medicines, including 26 cancer treatments. It means about 175,000 more people will be getting the medicines they need from October, Luxon said.
Mulholland was among those hoping the decision to reinstate the $5 prescription co-payment - announced in the Budget - would go towards cancer medicines, and was bitterly disappointed. But Luxon’s Monday announcement went a long way towards making it up.
“This is really good news,” he said. “Out of the chaos has come good and that is what we should be celebrating today.”
The breakdown
National campaigned on funding 13 new cancer medicines, if it won the election, by July 1 in a package which would cost $280m over four years. Now people waiting on medicines to be publicly funded, many of which are self-funding at great personal cost, will have to wait at least another three months until October.
Mulholland said the ball is now in Pharmac’s court, and he hoped patients would not have to wait too long.
The $604 million over four years in funding for Pharmac was a pre-commitment against next year’s Budget.
It comes after Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis, repeatedly outlined the difficult fiscal situation the government is in, and said the previous Labour Government was living beyond its means.
The hardest word
Dr Shane Reti, who is the Minister of Health said the government should have been clearer with the public that the drugs would not be in the Budget and apologised for any confusion caused.
“As we came out of budget, there was a vacuum. We didn't give a pathway or an explanation as to why we weren't ready to make more formative announcements at Budget, that we wanted to get this right.
“We wanted to make sure that we had implementation capacity. We wanted to make sure we could bring together a package that lands today, that benefits 175,000 New Zealanders.”
But Luxon would not personally apologise. “We could have done things, and communicated things, a little bit better, but I just say to you, this is a substantive, significant over the top investment that we are making here.”
The cancer treatments included in this package are:
Atezolizumab with bevacizumab for liver cancer
Axitinib for kidney cancer – second-line therapy
Cetuximab or panitumumab for bowel cancer – first-line therapy
Nivolumab for kidney cancer – second-line therapy
Osimertinib for lung cancer – first-line therapy
Osimertinib for lung cancer – second-line therapy
Pembrolizumab for bladder cancer
The cancer medicines will include treatments for:
Lung cancer
Liver cancer
Bowel cancer
Kidney cancer
Bladder cancer
Head and neck cancer
Melanoma
In total, Pharmac estimates the proposal will fund:
26 cancer treatments covering all cancer types originally listed plus other types not previously included (such as blood cancers);
up to seven of the original 13 cancer treatments proposed pre-election, with alternatives for the other treatments that are as or more effective than those originally listed;
28 other medicines that also add substantially to New Zealanders’ health and life outcomes, across a wide range of conditions which could include infections, respiratory conditions, osteoporosis, sexual health, dermatology, inflammatory conditions, and mental health.