Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Directing more money to Pharmac is the sensible choice

So, Winston Peters is pretty upset, as you would expect, about National's plan to take money from the foreign aid budget and use it to fund medicines through Pharmac. But from where I'm sitting, that seems fairly sensible, doesn't it?

The foreign aid budget, from what I understand, is worth about $1 billion, or roughly $88 for each New Zealander over four years. National wants to redirect about $17 of that $88 a person over the same period and keep it here in New Zealand to help pay for medicines. 

The rest would still go towards foreign aid, and assistance to the Pacific would remain untouched, which you would have to say is appropriate given China's growing interest in the region and New Zealand's frontline role in maintaining stability and limiting Chinese military influence and basing opportunities in the Pacific.

There may well be good reasons for some of this spending but I think there is much less justification for several of the examples National highlighted.

There is arguably much less value in New Zealand funding smart agricultural systems in Latin America, workshops with Indigenous farmers in Patagonia, or livestock emissions research equipment at universities in South Africa. South Africa is literally on the other side of the world from us.

For many New Zealanders, the rationale for spending money there is difficult to see. If there is a compelling reason, it is sufficiently removed from most people's daily lives that it creates a strong political argument, at least, for what National is proposing.

We all know New Zealand does not spend enough on medicines. For every medicine publicly funded here, Australia finances around 2.5. We are significantly behind our neighbours across the Tasman.

I ran into a woman I know at the weekend who has multiple sclerosis and cannot access the medication she would like funded in New Zealand. To get it, she would have to go to the United States.

Many people pay for health insurance for exactly this reason. It is not necessarily because they want coverage for elective surgery; it is because they want the reassurance that, if they develop breast cancer or another serious illness, they can access medicines that are available elsewhere in the developed world but are not publicly funded here.

That is, frankly, disgraceful. Pharmac's budget needs to increase.

Now, Winston Peters can obviously see some logic in maintaining this spending that the rest of us may not see. But, on the face of it, it looks as though, if National is re-elected, some money being spent on projects overseas could be brought back home and used to help save lives here in New Zealand.

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