Heather du Plessis-Allan: I'm weirdly grateful for the Government's cancer drugs stuff-up

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

I think we can all see the Nats stuffed up the 13 cancer drugs announcement on so many levels.
They should never have promised specific drugs, that's Pharmac's job.

But having promised them for the first year, they shouldn't have then broken that promise by leaving them out of the Budget.

And then, it's never really a good look if you finally get dragged to delivering on your promise because of public outrage.
But having said all of that - sometimes I think we get a little too caught up on the political shenanigans and not focus enough on the end point.
And how good is the end point?
We have just had the single biggest injection of cash into Pharmac ever, we've had more cancer drugs than ever promised to be delivered in one go.
That announcement yesterday of 54 new drugs wiped more a third off Pharmac’s wishlist.
Between the $600 million yesterday and the $1.7 billion announced in the Budget, this Government - which hasn’t even been in power for 9 months - has pumped $2.3 billion into Pharmac.
Now, I'm of the view that Pharmac is one of the most important things any Government funds, because it is literally the difference for some people between life and death.

And those people are people who, more often that not, have paid their taxes diligently and just been good people.

And good, normal, law-abiding Kiwis, I think, deserve access to as many drugs to save their lives as other people in the western world.
I will never complain about Pharmac getting more money, however we end up in that situation.
So in the end, I'm weirdly grateful for National stuffing this up, because we’ve ended up funding 54 new drugs we didn't have funded a couple of days ago. And that's the thing that really matters, isn’t it?

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