We might have a new Minister of Health, but the same destructive approach remains. A focus on easily measurable targets while concurrently dismantling preventative measures, gutting public health, and a refusal to adequately fund health services, resulting in
Ngā mihi. The brief history lesson highlights just how massive was Dr Reti’s sellout - he abandoned every one of his claims to being a Christian, Māori Doctor out to do no harm, yeah right!
and I suspect his demotion was more to do with the heat being faced re his shares in private health companies - and that this heat was starting to reveal the agenda to privatise. He was one of the first MAPAS graduates too, so it is gutting to see him embrace all the cruelty and harm of capitalism and privatisation
The deliberate defunding of our health service is a ticking time bomb, threatening to worsen health outcomes and create a two-tiered system. The goal? To redirect public funds into private providers pockets or push people into buying health insurance, essentially creating a queue-jumping privilege for those who can afford it.
Middle-income families who opt for insurance will face higher healthcare costs, while those who can't afford it - or choose to remain in the public system - will be left with a deliberately underfunded and inadequate system. This means poorer health outcomes, reduced mortality, and a healthcare system that's a mirror of the dreaded USA system, where it’s about profit not people. (Note: USA has the highest cost healthcare costs with the poorest health outcomes in the developed world - Commonwealth Fund report 2020).
But hey, health profiteers will be laughing themselves all the way to the bank, while everyday Kiwis suffer.
So much could be helped by the government being more hands on in preventative measures. I think of countries (like South Korea etc) that had periods of implementing nationwide exercise programmes ie the whole nation tuning into the same exercise routine through the radio and starting their day with simple exercises that everyone did, often together in workplaces and parks etc. Then there's more control that could be taken to limit and penalise the reach of companies selling ultra-processed foods while making the good food our nation creates in abundance readily accessible. The fact that we have food insecurity for so many in this nation is ludicrous when we produce enough food for about 50 million people. Only govt intervention would make it financially viable for food producers to keep more of it in the NZ market.
Those things alone would ease some pressure on our health system and save the government money in the long run, but it would take a government willing to be more interventionist on preventative measures and more willing to think about health holistically rather than only at the bottom of the cliff where they're putting things under even more pressure. Some govt control in the right place, while seemingly limiting choice - or at least, incentivising some choices over others, can create more of the sort of freedom that entails real human flourishing. If our supposed freedoms lead us to an early grave, are they really freedoms?
I’ve been wondering today if what happened on Sunday was mostly about taking transport, local govt and energy OFF Simeon Brown - all of which he’d taken into a contentious ‘culture war’. He’ll be completely hamstrung in health because we’ll never have the health service we deserve until we have a taxation system that’s fair.
Cancel the so-called "coalition" (call a general election if peters or seymour object), stop giving away taxpayers dollars to those who don't need them, FULLY fund all our health needs (including dental, ambulance......), cancel proposed "roads of national [un]importance.....
Do I really need to list everything that this government has wrong?
Ngā mihi. The brief history lesson highlights just how massive was Dr Reti’s sellout - he abandoned every one of his claims to being a Christian, Māori Doctor out to do no harm, yeah right!
and I suspect his demotion was more to do with the heat being faced re his shares in private health companies - and that this heat was starting to reveal the agenda to privatise. He was one of the first MAPAS graduates too, so it is gutting to see him embrace all the cruelty and harm of capitalism and privatisation
The deliberate defunding of our health service is a ticking time bomb, threatening to worsen health outcomes and create a two-tiered system. The goal? To redirect public funds into private providers pockets or push people into buying health insurance, essentially creating a queue-jumping privilege for those who can afford it.
Middle-income families who opt for insurance will face higher healthcare costs, while those who can't afford it - or choose to remain in the public system - will be left with a deliberately underfunded and inadequate system. This means poorer health outcomes, reduced mortality, and a healthcare system that's a mirror of the dreaded USA system, where it’s about profit not people. (Note: USA has the highest cost healthcare costs with the poorest health outcomes in the developed world - Commonwealth Fund report 2020).
But hey, health profiteers will be laughing themselves all the way to the bank, while everyday Kiwis suffer.
All NZers need to understand this.
So much could be helped by the government being more hands on in preventative measures. I think of countries (like South Korea etc) that had periods of implementing nationwide exercise programmes ie the whole nation tuning into the same exercise routine through the radio and starting their day with simple exercises that everyone did, often together in workplaces and parks etc. Then there's more control that could be taken to limit and penalise the reach of companies selling ultra-processed foods while making the good food our nation creates in abundance readily accessible. The fact that we have food insecurity for so many in this nation is ludicrous when we produce enough food for about 50 million people. Only govt intervention would make it financially viable for food producers to keep more of it in the NZ market.
Those things alone would ease some pressure on our health system and save the government money in the long run, but it would take a government willing to be more interventionist on preventative measures and more willing to think about health holistically rather than only at the bottom of the cliff where they're putting things under even more pressure. Some govt control in the right place, while seemingly limiting choice - or at least, incentivising some choices over others, can create more of the sort of freedom that entails real human flourishing. If our supposed freedoms lead us to an early grave, are they really freedoms?
Quite right Frank, surprisingly the RSB would probably stop government controls forever
I’ve been wondering today if what happened on Sunday was mostly about taking transport, local govt and energy OFF Simeon Brown - all of which he’d taken into a contentious ‘culture war’. He’ll be completely hamstrung in health because we’ll never have the health service we deserve until we have a taxation system that’s fair.
Cancel the so-called "coalition" (call a general election if peters or seymour object), stop giving away taxpayers dollars to those who don't need them, FULLY fund all our health needs (including dental, ambulance......), cancel proposed "roads of national [un]importance.....
Do I really need to list everything that this government has wrong?