ustekinumab was funded for inflammatory bowel disease<\/a>, including Crohn\u2019s and ulcerative colitis, that has not responded to other treatments.<\/p>\nIt means today, Becky, now 16, is \u201cin a great place\u201d, as her treatment is now fully funded.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there are lots of drugs that aren\u2019t. There are lots of drugs that could make a massive difference to people\u2019s quality of life, that [people] may assume are available because they are in other countries that we often trade with, but they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose, who is the chair of charity Ronald McDonald House, has seen first-hand how the lack of funding for treatments like this can impact families in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are new and more advanced treatments [available], which is brilliant, particularly if you think about things like autoimmune disease and cancer, but they come at a cost … you could be looking at up to half a million dollars for some of these.<\/p>\n
\u201cPharmac plays a role, but there\u2019s only so much money they\u2019ve got to play with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some people faced with having to pay for unfunded medications choose to move overseas to seek treatment if they are funded elsewhere, while others rely on Givealittle fundraisers or sell their homes and belongings. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose are the real choices that people are making every single day,\u201d Rose says.<\/p>\n
A growing number of insurance companies now offer non-Pharmac cover as an add-on to health insurance policies. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s something that wasn\u2019t an option at the time of his daughter\u2019s diagnosis. If it had been, Rose, who works for AA Insurance, where this policy is now available, says \u201cwe could have saved Becky a huge amount of pain\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would have ended up having fewer surgeries. We would have a smaller mortgage. We would probably own a bit more of our house, and the same for all of our family who chipped in.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Becky,]()
Becky, 16, is now in a “great place” healthwise as her treatment is funded.<\/p>\n
As with all types of insurance, the cost of this cover per year differs depending on age, gender, and whether you smoke. <\/p>\n
In New Zealand, insurance providers including nib, AIA, Southern Cross and Partners Life offer cover for unfunded drugs, capped at different amounts ranging from $10,000 to $600,000 a year.<\/p>\n
The cost of adding non-Pharmac cover to your health insurance depends on the level of cover you choose, as well as your personal situation. For example, adding nib\u2019s Non-Pharmac Plus cover to your hospital cover will cost you from $1.28 weekly with a cover limit of $50,000 per policy year. <\/p>\n
Malcolm Mulholland, chair of advocacy group Patient Voice Aotearoa, says the impact of having to self-fund medicines can be \u201cdevastating\u201d for Kiwis. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor some people it\u2019s a matter of life or death,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften I hear of heart-breaking conversations that are had among families about whether or not they place their family into debt, or they die earlier than they should. That can be the cold, hard reality of reduced medicine access as a New Zealand patient.\u201d<\/p>\n
This can mean people seek funded treatments elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re basically at the bottom of the developed world when it comes to medicine access, and some people do look to go overseas, in particular to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who has been with the NZ Herald since 2019. She specialises in all things health and wellbeing and is passionate about telling Kiwis\u2019 real-life stories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cShe was screaming and crying and we were in and out of the hospital, [there were] ambulances and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,16123,5988,2082,30538,221,17053,185,3523,111,139,222405,69,2744,3524],"class_list":["post-434550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cover","tag-families","tag-for","tag-helping","tag-how","tag-insurance","tag-is","tag-medical","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nonpharmac","tag-nz","tag-pay","tag-treatments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}