lol – looks like Ryal and Armstrong have taken the David Farrar course in manipulation by deceptive use of raw statistics. More is the shame for New Zealand.

What the hell are you talking about?

A massive amount of private sector healthcare is funded by the state every day in the form of GP visits.

Thanks, Labour.

You’re welcome.

Private providers may look low cost, but that’s only because they transfer huge amounts of cost to the public sector in terms of both management and back-stop services.

To give an example of a well known issue with private providers, every hip operation has a low very chance of complications leading to needing ICU facilities.

When we cost public provision of a hip op we cost in a part of the cost of public ICU services. When we cost private provision we don’t, but we have to pay for the public ICU costs on top of the private hip op charge. That’s the first issue with the private provider efficiency they rely on expensive back stop services being provided by the public sector. So we screw the costing model so that the private provider can make a profit off every hip op that goes well, and the public system ensures them against additional costs for the unavoidable not-so-good outcomes. Privatise the profit, socialise the loss!

The second is that there is additional cost in transferring a patient with complications from a private provider to a public ICU  we’re not only screwing the cost model to the benefit of private providers, but we’re actually incurring extra costs to do so.

In most cases, being a smaller private provider removes layers of management not required, smaller overheads, and a more responsive service. They can still turn a decent profit and yet be less expensive than the public service on a per-head-through-the-door basis.

I am quite sure that many could help to cover the cost of healthcare, risen from 1/6d in the pound to around 54% of GDP by paying a proportion of the costs. Likely they couldn’t afford to cover the entire cost of a neccessary procedure but they could cover some of the cost … those contributions would help to swell the health budget and enable more to be done..

You could say that this is happening already with those who can pay for insurance, but as far as I can see insurance is a confidence trick with people being sucked in with low premiums when they are young and health and spat out on retirement with premiums reflecting their then likely cost of care. It is obvious to me that the only satisfactory system is whole-of-life level premiums and the best way to do that is through taxation or SOE type organisation. An organisation paying for appropriate services from all organisations, private and public, in the country.

Labour did a pretty good job of keeping the healthcare system focused on the longer term objectives. It didn’t pander too much to whining from people wanting to favour themselves or their families. Public healthcare is a rationed system.

It is pretty obvious that with this government, whomever squeals the loudest will get served first- regardless if it is benefical to society as a whole.