{"id":22906,"date":"2025-12-08T20:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T07:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/?p=22906"},"modified":"2025-12-08T20:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T07:08:09","slug":"pharmac-proposal-risks-cutting-access-to-medicines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/?p=22906","title":{"rendered":"Pharmac Proposal Risks Cutting Access to Medicines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ingrid Ovenstone, Patient Support Officer with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia Advocates NZ, warns that Pharmac\u2019s plan to remove medicines from its Options for Investment list after two years hides chronic underfunding.<\/p>\n<p>These medicines have already been proven effective and cost\u2011efficient, but New Zealand\u2019s low spend on medicines &#8211; just 4.9% of the health budget compared with an OECD average of 13.3%, leaves patients waiting years for treatments that are standard overseas.<\/p>\n<p>For people with conditions like chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, this means relying on outdated chemotherapies while modern oral and targeted therapies remain unfunded.<\/p>\n<p>Read the article here:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepost.co.nz\/nz-news\/360909980\/denying-kiwis-access-modern-drugs-about-politics-not-affordability\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pharmac Proposal Risks Cutting Access to Medicines<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ingrid Ovenstone, Patient Support Officer with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia Advocates NZ, warns that Pharmac\u2019s plan to remove medicines from its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[79,82,96,102,129],"class_list":["post-22906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-media","category-featured","tag-sam-neil-blood-cancer-pharmac","tag-rachel-smalley","tag-clinical-trials-cll-blood-cancer","tag-david-seymour-christopher-luxon","tag-pharmac-health-new-zealand"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Dollar-sign-in-capsules.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22908,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22906\/revisions\/22908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}