Labour has just announced a policy to increase Pharmac funding by $1billion over four years to fund additional medicines.

With the current Pharmac budget of $1.2billion per year and needing a further $213million, by Minister Verrall’s own admission, just to keep up with current costs - then this is nothing but a placebo announcement.

Not only is the Pharmac model a failure, which Labour and other parties seek to persist with, but New Zealand is now investing less than a third per person of what Australia does for access to first world pharmaceuticals.

New Zealand First has already announced a policy to get rid of Pharmac and replace it with a model that works, then add an extra $1.3billion per year to its currently grossly underfunded budget.

That is the kind of real investment that is needed.

Labour is persisting with a $30 billion blow out in light rail, three Auckland tunnels – two across the harbour and one through the North Shore, which shows that they simply don’t care about investing properly in public health.

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