KEY POINTS:
National's plan to fund breast cancer drug Herceptin for 12 months if it wins the election has drawn fire from Labour, which is accusing its opponent of having a "ludicrous" ad-hoc medicines strategy.
During a campaign stop in Hastings yesterday National leader John Key confirmed earlier hints that
his party would back the drug for women with early Her-2 positive breast cancer.
Pharmac has refused to fund Herceptin for a 12-month period and is instead backing it for nine weeks.
Mr Key said National had argued for two or three years that both the Government and Pharmac had got it wrong, and the party would follow through on its argument.
"So we're putting up the $9 million that will be required on an annual basis to make sure that Herceptin is fully funded, for 52 weeks for New Zealand women," he said.
"New Zealand women shouldn't be made to pay what are very large bills if they need Herceptin for their cancer treatment."
Pharmac put its decision not to extend funding for Herceptin to 12 months down to the fact it was not convinced the longer treatment offered any additional benefits over nine weeks.
But Mr Key argued the decision was actually all about money.
"It's a good chunk of their budget - they're not going to fund it unless we put up the money, and we're putting up the money."
The extra millions were part of a larger boost to medicine funding in National's policy announcement.
It promised an additional $40 million would be pumped into medicines in year one if it won the election, then its policy would cost $60 million in year two, and $80 million in year three.
The money would come from the extra $750 million a year that National has already said it would put into health, in what is an adoption of what Labour has been doing.
Yesterday Labour attacked Mr Key's plan and questioned the wisdom of telling Pharmac what to do.
It was better to let Pharmac decide what drugs it would back, Labour said.
Health Minister David Cunliffe also suggested that what was missing from National's announcement was as interesting as what was in it.
"Nowhere in National's medicine policy does it promise to keep the majority of prescriptions at just $3, bringing back memories of their failure last year to mention their plan to remove GP fee reviews, something that would have allowed GP fees to skyrocket," Mr Cunliffe said.
Aside from Herceptin, National also said it wanted drug approvals from other countries to be recognised in New Zealand to speed up the registration system.
