Health committee  Thank you.

Health committee  They tend to cover copayments sometimes for Pharmac-funded medicines. Some of the private insurers, to be honest, have started to invest or have special packages for cancer treatments for melanoma and other things, but these are additional, on top of the system proper—

Health committee  A lot of it has been just to open up the discourse. Quite clearly the companies have asked for transparency in the Pharmac decision-making process. They would be comfortable, I think, Heather, if they were able to sit there when the decisions were being made, to hear that their m

Health committee  We are a net importer of pharmaceuticals. Back in 1990 we had two or three domestic New Zealand companies that were mainly generics companies, but one of those companies no longer exists. The other one is a net exporter of generics out of New Zealand. It changed its model in the

Health committee  I will use diabetes as an example. One in 16 New Zealanders has type 2 diabetes, so there are about 250,000 type 2 diabetics in New Zealand in a population of 4.7 million. Again, it's not just us saying this. I understand, from looking at your formulary, that diabetics in Canad

Health committee  It's timely, because Pharmac is just reviewing the rare disorders program after five years and invested around $25 million. I think it has 10 medicines that it has put through. Not to be critical, but in one case I'm aware of, the medicine they approved for funding actually has n

Health committee  You go through the same process for the rare disease medicines that you go through for every other medicine. The process is identical. There is no difference. It's just actually about how you calculate. The cost-utility analysis becomes quite difficult when you have so few patien

Health committee  Because it's for a small population group, it's not necessarily on the formulary, but it will have to be listed through Pharmac.

Health committee  It's a publicly funded system. I think it's been mentioned before that most people would access it through going to a doctor to pick up a prescription, then going to a chemist, a local pharmacist, and picking up medicine that way. Essentially the way the system works is that as s

Health committee  Yes, it's a public administration system. It's through public health.

Health committee  New Zealand now has a system under which anyone under the age of 13 has free prescriptions at no charge. Young children aren't charged at all.

Health committee  It came in for a lot of criticism publicly from oncologists at the time it was first released. It's not based.... As I mentioned, the studies that I saw had been based on the real world, so they were looking at this vast system with their medicines in it. The Pharmac study was

Health committee  It's the same process that you go through, generic or innovative. About 78% by volume is generic. The majority of the medicines are generics. It's only some that we're aware of that have the rebate system, which I'm sure Matthew touched on. You go through the same system. Obviou

Health committee  I think about the last round of tenders—

Health committee  It was about 80% in the last round of tenders, which is what Pharmac goes out for. About 80% of the community pharmaceuticals were sole supply, and for hospital medicines it was about 78%. An interesting little fact is that we have drug shortages in New Zealand. Of the last eigh