Pharmac has not been performing well - no small matter when every Kiwi's life depends on it. Today it was announced its CEO, Sarah Fitt, has resigned, as confirmed by Pharmac's Board Chair Paula Bennett. As a general rule, to prescribe a drug, you must be a NZ registered Medical Practitioner. Neither Bennett not Fitt are, or ever have been, so its unlikely that between the two of them, they have ever done so. So the health of the nation has been put into the hands of two people - in charge of buying every drug we use - with neither of them being a doctor who has ever written prescriptions on a day-to-day basis.
Bennett is a former real estate agent, and got her job, it strongly appears, due to her links to National. Fitt has a Bachelor's degree in the UK in pharmacology, not medicine.
How come in Wellington the people at the top are not the right people?
\As several Kiwi industrialist-owners have told me, "when you have the wrong person at the top, nothing will ever work".
Its not the small fish in NZ who are problem, its the big fish who should've never got the jobs they're sitting in and won't go.
The PM should've never allowed the 20 to 30 names I've now accumulated to have been planted into the biggest jobs in the country when better hires were available.
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
I disagree with your assumption that the drug buying agency should be run by "prescribers" i.e. medical practitioners.
Buying medicines with a limited fund is quite different from writing prescriptions.
Pharmac has been a world respected agency for it's ability to get the best deal for the limited money they have allocated to them by the government.
Of course, one will hear howls of outrage from time to time, when some person cannot get their particular drug funded. But this is the exception. By and large the vast majority of (life saving) medicines in New Zealand are fully funded.
Come on Professor! Experience in drug prescription is good when you run a pharmacy not a drug bring agency. One good point there though - a wrong person on the top is a recipe for failure.
I agree with Robert.
Paula Bennett's position requires either high level management experience and / or enough medicinal experience to understand the basis for prioritization / amount spent.
Bennett has neither...... Neither did the previous Labour political appointee Steve Maharey.
National should have put Dr Des Gorman in charge, Des has management and medicine pedigree unmatched in NZ. Des set up public health systems for various countries and recommended against their requests to set up a pharmac type system. Des discovered that multi country group buying saves way more money than a single country pharmac.
If Des was in charge pharmac would be disestablished and nz would join forces with australia to by our drugs. Both countries get cheaper drugs and nz no longer has to pay for numpties to sit on the pharmac board.
I agree Mark. NZ shares the TGA with Australia, also various medical colleges.
So why not Pharmac or its Australian equivalent?
It’s OK for one trans-Tasman agency to rule on the safety of medicines for both countries - but it’s not OK to have one which negotiates with big pharma for the best deal for the citizens of both countries.
Why not?
Well the answer is that such an arrangement would quickly identify the insufficient funding NZ governments allocate to this part of health budget.
I recall seeing a damning list of all the medicines Australians get through their PBS but which New Zealanders can’t.
If we want to retain that inequity, keep Pharmac. If not, let’s change.
Des Gorman was always a voice of sanity in the Covid debacle . Anzac purchasing power , excellent .
Robert, I love your articles. And I will bite.....please submit an article listing the 30 names of the people in the top jobs who you don't believe should be there.....I will start the list.
Pead.....
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