Kedgley Sue: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Enhancement of Competition) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Enhancement of Competition) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1826] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party has long supported the independence of Pharmac and greatly values the way that that independence helps to insulate the New Zealand market from the influences of the global pharmaceutical industry which let us face it is dominated by 10 to 12 very large multinational corporations. Those corporations are amongst the wealthiest companies in the world. They have budgets bigger than New Zealand’s and therefore have huge leverage and influence. Obviously the goal of most—probably all—pharmaceutical companies is to get the highest possible return for their shareholders. They would like to get all their drugs into New Zealand at the highest price the market will bear and with as many drugs as possible subsidised. If companies increase their prices—as they seek to do—our choice is reduced not increased. 
Heather Roy in particular has given us lots of examples of drugs and I will give another—the breast cancer drug Herceptin. As Tony Ryall pointed out people will be here tomorrow demonstrating their concern about it. He said there was huge disquiet in New Zealand about why people cannot get access to this drug but there actually should be huge disquiet here about why the price of Herceptin in New Zealand is 50 percent higher than it is in the United Kingdom. Why should that be? What possible justification is there for that? Does it cost 50 percent more to ship it to New Zealand—or is the price of oil to blame? Obviously not. 
There should be great disquiet too about why the drug costs $75000 to $100000 per treatment. I think it is frankly obscene that companies are charging $100000 for drug treatments. There are more drugs in the pipeline at $300000; there are even some at $700000. Why are companies charging more in some countries than in others? There should be huge disquiet about that. If 300 women have Herceptin at $100000 a year that costs $30 million. That is money that cannot be spent elsewhere. Members should not get me wrong. I will support women’s right to have access to the drug Herceptin but I am concerned about why we should have to pay $100000 a year—50 percent more than the price in the United Kingdom—for that drug. So it is absolutely in our national interest that we have a drug purchasing agency that is as independent and as strong as possible and that is able to negotiate access to pharmaceuticals for the cheapest possible price. 
In our view if we got rid of the exemption the main beneficiaries would be Russell McVeagh and other large law firms. The pockets of Russell McVeagh would be filled which would inevitably lead to litigation and that would be used as a tool to undermine Pharmac’s ability to negotiate access to pharmaceuticals at the cheapest price. What on earth would be the point of that? The litigation would be used to impose injunctions delay decisions tie up resources and pursue more lengthy litigation. That would impact on the pharmaceutical budget overall so New Zealand would end up paying more not less for pharmaceuticals and the precious health dollar would be stretched even further. If a court case costs $1 million that is $1 million of precious health money that could be spent on a whole lot of other things. 
We have to remember too that we are not talking about eliminating competition for drugs only competition for the subsidy for drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have monopoly power over patented medicines so competition occurs only when a drug is off patent. I think this bill is part of a wider campaign to undermine Pharmac so that pharmaceutical companies can make more money and sell their drugs at whatever price they can manage. Far from encouraging this campaign we should be doing everything in our power to protect and strengthen Pharmac to ensure that we can get access to pharmaceuticals as cheaply as possible. 
Barbara Stewart talked about dealing with real issues; there are real issues we should be dealing with. Why is there no requirement for consumer information on all drugs sold in New Zealand? Why does the only information many GPs have about drugs come from pharmaceutical companies? Why is there not a mandatory requirement to report adverse reactions to drugs? So the Greens are concerned about many issues. We welcome the fact that New Zealand is to have a medicines policy but this bill unfortunately would just drive up costs and undermine choice for consumers in this country.