Associate Health Minister David Seymour welcomes Pharmac’s proposal to change funding criteria for more type 2 diabetes medicines based on clinical need.

Under the proposal, 25,000 more diabetic Kiwis will gain access to the treatments over the next few years.

David Seymour says there's a lot of potential in investing in more GLP-1 medications to prevent other health problems impacting people down the line.

"We've made a lot of progress on this kind of whole of society approach to funding medicines that will save us money in the long term, but that's some of the challenges we've run into so far." 

Pharmac has since confirmed the ethnicity criteria reference refers to the diabetes medicine consultation and they have separate recommendations for semaglutide funding applications.

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