Medicines money a mystery
A ‘‘big pharma’’ lobby group has sunk more than $150,000 into a mysterious scheme called ‘‘Election 2017 Project’’.
Financial statements for the pharmaceutical lobby group Medicines NZ show it spent $151,106 on the project, the firm’s second-largest expense of 2016.
The group has refused to reveal where the cash went, and there are no references to the project on the Medicines NZ website.
Before the election, Medicines NZ strongly supported a Labour Party policy to adopt an interim drugs fundthat would allow extremely expensive but new-age drugs to be funded for two years, where there wasn’t sufficient data to consider permanent funding.
Health Minister David Clark said it remained Labour policy, and that he was ‘‘convinced’’ it was the right thing to do.
Medicines NZ managing director Dr Graeme Jarvis would not respond to requests for comment and there are no records that show Medicines NZ donated money to any political party.
The group’s 2017 goals include getting patients wider access to new medicines through the public health system, and to have new medicines recognised as ‘‘a costeffective solution’’.
It also wanted the Government to invest $40 per person, per year, to clear and fund the medicines waiting list. It’s also lobbied to boost publicly funded medicines from 5.3 per cent to 7 per cent of the health budget by 2020.
These goals could be partially achieved by the Government’s cancer drug fund. But the fund was not in Labour’s 100-day plan, and no costing work had been carried out.
Clark said he would be looking at the data from overseas examples.
‘‘We’ve said we want to explore an early access fund and yes, we want to have a look at what’s possible in that area. There would have to be a burden of evidence that that was a bad idea for me to not want to pursue it,’’ he said.
He would be having ‘‘robust discussions’’ with those in the drug purchasing space.