Andrew Dickens: National’s trade-off between foreign aid and medicine shows how far we've fallen

National’s trade-off between foreign aid and Pharmac is a sign of just how far we’ve fallen.

Firstly, our spend on medicines through Pharmac has always been woefully low. It pales beside Australia’s investment and that’s never made sense to me.

Medicines funded by Pharmac save money within the health system preventing ongoing costs through hospitalisation and ongoing care.

The way we’ve underfunded it has been a false economy.

But successive government’s have found excuses to keep it running on fumes.

So it should be appropriately funded.

But it isn’t.

So now National has decided to rob Peter to pay Paul by reducing our foreign aid.

Not all of it. About 10 per cent of it.

But that will still be enough to lower our perception as a compassionate country actively participating on the world stage.

In an ideal world we would be wealthy enough to fund both.

But we’re not. And in that is more proof that we are a shadow of the country we used to be.

Andrew Dickens is a broadcaster with Newstalk ZB. - where this article was sourced.