In November BCAC responded to a Pharmac consultation to shorten its Options for Investment (OFI) list. This list currently has 127 medicines that Pharmac’s expert clinical committees have recommended for funding because they will benefit people, but are still awaiting a funding decision. There were five medicines for different breast cancer subtypes on the list at the time of the consultation: Phesgo and Perjeta for early HER2 positive breast cancer, Enhertu for advanced HER2-low, Keytruda for early triple negative breast cancer and Abraxane for advanced. Trodelvy for advanced triple negative breast cancer was added later in November.
We submitted that removing beneficial medicines from the 'waiting' list would not achieve Pharmac’s stated aim of increasing clarity and transparency on how it manages funding applications. We recommended deep reform of Pharmac’s health technology assessment processes to develop a modern best-practice timely and transparent patient-centred approach that would deliver better health outcomes for New Zealanders.
Read our BCAC submission here.
BCAC, Metavivors, Sweet Louise and the Breast Cancer Foundation also signed a joint submission from 50 diverse patient groups opposing Pharmac’s proposal.
Read the joint submission here.
6 December 2025
UPDATE 17 December 2025: Pharmac has announced that following feedback, it has decided not to proceed with a proposal to decline some low-ranked applications on the Options for Investment (OFI) list. Read more about this here.
