Nicola Willis: Finance Minister on the possible additional funding for Pharmac to cover cancer medicines and other medications

Sign-off for a huge Government funding boost for Pharmac - which would allow for greater access to potential life-changing drugs for cancer patients - could come as soon as Monday.  

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed she would announce a policy “very shortly”, but wouldn't confirm the exact timing.  

Willis was speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning, following reporting by The Post that an announcement of a $600 million boost for drug funding is imminent.  

That money could allow National to keep its pre-election promise to fund life-saving cancer treatments, while also giving Pharmac more money for other drugs.  

Willis told Hosking no announcement would be made today.  

But she did not deny, when asked, that an announcement about drug funding would be made next week following Cabinet sign-off on Monday.  

“We’ve been working very hard on this policy and we’re going to make an announcement very shortly,” she told Hosking.  

She did not specify whether the $600m figure was accurate.  

Willis’ comments come after the Government has been accused of breaking an election promise to fund 13 cancer-specific medicines, after this year’s Budget did not include funding for the policy.  

Health Minister Shane Reti has promised the drugs will still be funded and delivered this year.  

That apparently put Reti at odds with Pharmac Minister David Seymour who this week said he could not guarantee funding for the specific 13 drugs listed in the National Party’s election policy, partly because that would threaten Pharmac’s negotiating ability.  

However, an additional $600m would represent an almost 40 per cent increase in Pharmac’s budget, which could give the drug-buying agency the freedom to buy the 13 cancer medicines along with other medications, maintaining its independence.  

Health advocacy group Patient Voice Aotearoa described the pending policy as “excellent news, not only for terminally-ill cancer patients, but for many of the 330,000 New Zealanders who are waiting for one or more of the 90 medicines on Pharmac’s Options for Investment List”.  

“Today’s news will put a significant dent in Pharmac’s waiting list of medicines that they want to fund,” chair Malcolm Mulholland said.  

“This is worth celebrating. I hope that today’s news signals the end of New Zealand being the only country in the world with a waiting list of medicines.  

“Having patients wait for years for a medicine not only leads to poorer health outcomes but is inhumane. It should be to our eternal shame that successive Governments underfunded Pharmac for over two decades which resulted in an ever-growing waiting list of medicines, and consequently, lives either being cut short or living in pain and misery.”  

The policy, campaigned on by National ahead of the 2023 election, promised to fund 13 cancer treatments which were unavailable in New Zealand.  

The list of drugs had been identified in a 2022 Cancer Control Agency report. Some experts and advocates, including those in that report, have questioned whether other or more modern drugs would be more effective.  

The Budget this year didn’t include funding for the policy, prompting widespread criticism and forcing the Government to come up with a solution to honour the commitment. No timeline has been offered regarding an announcement on the future of the policy, except that it would be implemented by the end of the year.  

Reti, a National MP, earlier this week admitted the Government had poorly communicated the policy’s future but he stood by his party’s policy, guaranteeing the same 13 drugs would be funded.  

“We had made a commitment to these people and they saw themselves in this policy and so we’re going to deliver that policy.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morning, seven past seven. So we hauled ourselves out of
recession in the first quarter. That's the good news. The
worries some bit as virtually everyone thinks the current quarter
isn't going to be quite as good. The Finance Minister
Nikola Willis is well us very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Is this part of your first one hundred days? Get
some growth?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is the long shadow that we always ward would
be there. You take over after a government pump the
economy for a cash field and inflational crisis. Infrastrates have
gone very high, and now the economy is hurting and
it is very tough. It's a part of the economic cycle.
It is difficult for people to enjoy. But what we

(00:38):
know is that we're going to come out of it.
Interest rates are going to come down. That will breathe
life into the economy and we've got a plan to
grow it from there.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Well, that's good to hear, but interest rates aren't coming down.
And that's the problem with yesterday's number because it will
allow the Reserve Bank to come back yet again and
say everything's going to plan and we're not cutting until
next year. What happens between now and next year because
that's a lot all that time.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
It is a long time. What Treasury are forecasting is
for inflation to keep coming down, to come back into
band and they're forecasting that from there you'll seet interest
rates coming down. Now when the Reserve Bank choose to
make that as their independent choice. But what we are
seeing in our forecast is that this is kind of

(01:22):
what the reserve banks said they were engineering. They said
they wanted to see this slow down. Well, this is
a slowdown, that is for sure. And what we want
to see is productive growth coming back into the economy.
And we're doing the right things. We're getting our own
spending under control. We're also making sure that New Zealanders
have more cash in their own back pockets this winter

(01:43):
sales tax release coming at the end of July. And
where we're working on the underlying drivers of productive growth.
You know, it is the sensible thing. Education and skills, infrastructure,
more competition, less red tape, stronger global connections, getting some
capital into the country, smarter approach to science and innovation.
Those are the things we have to do. It's not

(02:05):
a silver bullet, but unless we do those things, this
economy will keep bouncing along the bottom. So we're taking
that challenge very seriously.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
All of that is true, but it doesn't get fixed
next week, next month, and maybe you could argue not
even next year, because what you've just outlined a big
picture things you're asking New Zealander is to endure a
very long period of very difficult times.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
No, I'm also delivering things this year. I think it
is really important that tax reduction is coming at the
end of the July that is sunlight and what would
otherwise be a very challenging winter. I think it is
important that we're significantly increasing local road maintenance projects because
actually that funding goes straight into people wearing hard hats

(02:49):
and hivers. They are projects that can start quickly. They're
not long term infrastructure projects that consist of a picture
of light rail on a page. They're actual people filling
actual pop So we are doing practical things. I know
that's what New Zealanders require of us. Right now. We're
getting on with it. We have and hear it's at
a mess. I completely acknowledge that, and I know that

(03:11):
some people hear that and they say we'll fix it overnight.
But you know what Grant Roberts punts the economy with cash,
he's through inflation very high, much higher than in other
countries than the world assisted for longer, and now here
we are. Economics has its own gravity, and we're going
to focus on giving the economics right.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Is good news coming this afternoon on the drug front,
we will do and it is what times the announcement?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
No, No, it's not. I don't like building expectations. No
it's not.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Okay, So the reportage this morning is wrong. Is the
next week an announcement on the far make money?

Speaker 2 (03:49):
I look, I've been saying all week we'll be making
announcements shortly.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Okay, So the reporters this morning is wrong. It's not
coming today.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
That's not coming today.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Will it be signed off by cabinet on Monday and
then coming next week after that?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
As we've said, we've been working very hard on this policy,
mart and we're going to make an announcement very shortly.
We can't a lot of people want to hear it.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Good stuff, You have a good weekend, appreciate it very much.
That's all we needed to hear. So the reports this
morning that it's coming today is wrong, and they should
have worked that out because the story they wrote and
I think this is stuff strikes again. They're saying it hasn't.
On one hand, they're saying it's been announced this afternoon,
six hundred million for the drugs. And what's interesting about it,
it's not specific to the thirteen that gets David Seymour
out of jail. It's just a general increase for FARMAC.

(04:33):
Could increase their budget by forty percent. We're talking six
hundred million dollars. That's over four years. And then halfway
through the story they then say it hasn't been signed
off by cabinet, So join some dots person who wrote
the story. If something hasn't been signed off by cabinet,
you can't announce it this afternoon. In Cabinet aren't meeting
this morning. Small clue. So when they meet next week Monday,
they'll sign it off and then they'll announce it next week.

(04:54):
But that seems to be potentially some good news. Twelve
and it's past.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
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