Frog on Pharmac

Frog has an interesting post on Pharmac. I disagree with Frog about banning advertising and the conspiracy theory about the drug companies writing the story in the SST about Pharmac and drugs it won’t fund.

However I do agree that the Pharmac model is fundamentally a good one, and the best way to get further drugs funded is to increase the budget for medicines (which National is doing) rather than try and reverse Pharmac decisions on particular drugs.

There is always a limit though to the ability of the public health system to fund every medicine we would like. This is why I think peopel should be encouraged to have their own health savings accounts which can be used to meet exceptional health care costs. The Singapore model is one worth investigating.