Dr Chris Jackson: Medical Oncologist on the approach needed to funding cancer drugs

An excellent outcome from a terrible process. 

That's Medical Oncologist Chris Jackson's summation of Pharmac's latest funding boost.  

The Government's committing $604 million to cover funding for 54 new medicines, including 26 cancer treatments.  

Jackson says we have to be careful about implementation because dumping 26 cancer medicines into the system at once could create a capacity demand issue.  

He told Mike Hosking that a number of cancer services around the country are already stretched.  

Jackson says if we don't fund the infrastructure for them like chemo units, nurses, and the like, we'll end up with more waiting lists.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morning, seven past seven. So when it finally arrived, it
had an avalanche field to at over six hundred million
dollars worth of new medical funding for FARMAC and doing so,
the National Party, at least in part, put right what
should never have gone wrong in the first place. Twenty
six new cancer treatments are part of the six hundred
and four million dollar package. One hundred and seventy five
thousand people are going to be better off. Medical on
cologist doctor Chris Jackson with us. Good morning, Chill and Mike.

(00:21):
You were part of the list of thirteen, the original
list of thirteen. Should they have ever gone down that
particular route? In your view?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Absolutely not. The list wasn't ever designed to be a
shopping list. It was a snapshot in time which compared
New Jill into Australia and what we've had here as
an excellent outcome from a terrible process.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
So that's good, isn't it Because of the r As
much as you want to bag what they did, the
end result counts, and boy did it count yesterday. It
looked enormous.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, we've never had any investments at this extent, Mike,
and the entirety of farm accesstory. I mean, six hundred
million is a very very very big number, and we
have never had this many cancer drugs funded at once
any time. So despite the way we got here, I'm
absolutely utly thrilled. There are still quite a few fishops though, Mike.
You know, when you dump twenty six cancer medicines into
the system at once, the largest ever, you do create

(01:11):
a bit of a capacity demand issue. And the cancer
services already pretty tight, and there's a number of services
around the country which have've already got waiting lists in place,
and so if we don't fund the infrastructure for them,
the chemo units, the nurses and the light, then you
can end up with cancer waiting lists in six to
twelve months time. So we've got to be careful about
how we do this.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Thing that struck me yesterday, one hundred and seventy five
thousand people are going to be That's a lot of
sick people in this country, isn't it that weren't getting here?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah? Absolutely, I mean we've said for a long time
that utilan's time when it comes to access to cancer medications,
and it's great to see the government recognizing this. I
think their intent when they did you know, announce Their
policy was to acknowledge that demand and acknowledge that need.
So as pleased that we're putting focus on cancer policies.
But as I said to you at the time, politicians
shouldn't be picking cancer medicines. They should get out of

(01:55):
the way and let fam do their job.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Has that been the lesson in this once and for all,
good or bad, right or wrong. Farmac is the model
and we should stick with it.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, five May. It's got a lot of problems, and
there are a few problems with this announcement and how
it's going to be delivered, but it is the best
of a bad bunch of alternatives. The last thing you
want is Polly's picking drugs. You certainly don't want big
farmer getting large blank checks from the state, and you
don't want those who tell the biggest story through the
media to que jump. What we've had here is by

(02:25):
lifting out farm x's budget, you've had cancer hasn't q
jumped all the other medications. It has been twenty six
drugs plus fifty total, so other areas have benefited too.
It's cost of an awful lot of money because of
the political problem they've created. It would have been cheaper
to do it another way, and I'm really really pleased
how we've landed. We need to make sure the implementation's
done well now, because if it's not, we're going to

(02:46):
create another problem just down the line. For more from
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