These drugs would make the difference in both quality and length of life for some, and could be the difference between life and death for others,
Funding was to come from reinstating the $5 prescription fee for everyone except people with Community Services cards and pensioners but that isn’t going to be enough.
One way the government could get more money for these drugs is by means testing all the extras for pensioners.
I defend universal superannuation because the alternative is a disincentive to thrift.
The poor would get a pension, the really rich wouldn’t need it but in between are the people who are too rich to be poor and too poor to be rich.
Those who through hard work and postponing spending retire with a nest egg would find that lessened the amount of their pensions, or disqualified them from it altogether.
Others who through bad luck, or bad management, had no nest eggs would get the help denied to the workers and savers.
However, my defense of universality doesn’t extend to extras such as the winter energy payment and other taxpayer funded add-ones to the pension like the prescription subsidy.
The government could, and should, at least make the extras opt-in. Better still it should means test them then use the money saved to fund more cancer drugs.
No winter energy payment and a $5 prescription charge for those who don’t need them would be a small price to pay for better cancer treatments for those who do need them.
It might also reinforce the message that the dire economic situation we’re in requires sacrifices and extra help for pensioners who can pay their own power bills and prescription fees are nice-to-haves the country simply can’t afford.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
I defend universal superannuation because the alternative is a disincentive to thrift.
The poor would get a pension, the really rich wouldn’t need it but in between are the people who are too rich to be poor and too poor to be rich.
Those who through hard work and postponing spending retire with a nest egg would find that lessened the amount of their pensions, or disqualified them from it altogether.
Others who through bad luck, or bad management, had no nest eggs would get the help denied to the workers and savers.
However, my defense of universality doesn’t extend to extras such as the winter energy payment and other taxpayer funded add-ones to the pension like the prescription subsidy.
The government could, and should, at least make the extras opt-in. Better still it should means test them then use the money saved to fund more cancer drugs.
No winter energy payment and a $5 prescription charge for those who don’t need them would be a small price to pay for better cancer treatments for those who do need them.
It might also reinforce the message that the dire economic situation we’re in requires sacrifices and extra help for pensioners who can pay their own power bills and prescription fees are nice-to-haves the country simply can’t afford.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
We have so much discrimination in NZ without adding wealth to the official mix.
With the digital tracking of money and assets, tax will have been fairly paid , so to punish anyone for being too thrifty is absurd.
Fund the drugs through prudent use of taxes rather than the ridiculous waste that Labour sprayed around without benefit to anyone.
The MSM hid the fact that Ardern took half a billion dollars worth of expired Covid tests to the dump - what could that have bought for Pharmac ?
$5 prescription charges are insignificant in comparison.
Just maybe NZ should sit on the alarmist climate change rhetoric fence , work towards adaption and withdraw from the huge payments to unidentified world climate slush funds .
Then there would be plus $2,000 million ( $2 billion) for specialist health funding.
The alterative in NZ, watch our loved ones suffer as Climate Zealots fritter NZ funds away fighting nature.
An interim measure could be to allow patients to 'top up' the cost of a drug from their own financial resources. The State would pay a prescribed maximum towards the drug and the patient would make up the difference. This system has been used in the UK.
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