health
Categories under health
- covid-19 (322)
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You’re not a doctor, Tariana
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, January 26th, 2010 - 46 comments
Tariana Turia got her stomach stapled to tackle her diabetes and it seems to have worked. She wants more people to get the operation. If stomach stapling is a cost-effective way to treat diabetes and will prevent the need for other medical care I think that’s great. What I don’t want to see happen is […]
Cowardly
Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, January 23rd, 2010 - 25 comments
This is how Health Minister Tony Ryall announced the Government would be appealing the court decision to try to get out of paying people for caring for disabled children: – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Better support for family caregivers recommended Press […]
Over-promise, under-deliver on health
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 am, January 15th, 2010 - 7 comments
Last year, Tony Ryall announced health reforms (ironically, an additional layer of beaurcracy) that he claimed would save $700 million over five years, about 1% of the health budget. Now, Labour has revealed, that estimate is at the high end of a range and the low-end is just $350 million. Worse, this isn’t even an official government figure, […]
PHARMAC on the altar of free trade
Written By: - Date published: 7:36 am, November 18th, 2009 - 25 comments
Yesterday John Key indicated that he might be willing to dismantle PHARMAC if it gets us a better free trade deal with the US*. We’re lucky to have a few great institutions in New Zealand that deliver for everyone at a lower cost than other countries – ACC is one, PHARMAC is another. both are […]
Nanny State
Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, October 8th, 2009 - 58 comments
Under new laws proposed by John Key we’re going to need a prescription to get any cold medicine with pseudoephedrine in it. Anyone who has found themselves coming down with a flu or cold as they run up to an important deadline will tell you there’s nothing like pseudoephedrine to get you across the line. […]
World Vegetarian Day October 1st
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, October 1st, 2009 - 85 comments
I’m a vegetarian and today, October 1st, is the worldwide day to celebrate the benefits of not eating meat and the healthy contribution to a better society vegetarianism makes. The personal is political. My choice to eschew meat for 30 years has exposed me to abuse from chefs, sexually coded remarks from ‘red blooded’ men, […]
Socialist America
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, September 26th, 2009 - 8 comments
The health care debate going on in America is a very serious debate, and who wins it has important implications for what kind of direction America takes from here (more in a later post perhaps). The Republican / Conservative / talk back radio framing of the debate is as dishonest as it is predictable. This […]
Banning smoking
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, September 24th, 2009 - 69 comments
I have a lot of respect for Hone Harawira. The voting for a Tory government thing has lessened it but his hatred for the tobacco companies balances things out. Harawira wants smoking banned. Says he would love to whip or worse the smoking company bosses (you know they cut the price of cigarettes during the recession so […]
Be bold on smoking
Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, September 14th, 2009 - 21 comments
Very good piece by Anthony Hubbard in the Sunday Star Times: The Maori Party is pressuring the government to take tough new anti-smoking measures including a hefty price rise and a ban on retail displays and is calling for a select committee inquiry to “bring these bastards from the tobacco companies out in the open”. […]
Just put it away
Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, September 13th, 2009 - 32 comments
I know this free condoms idea is just a remit, not Labour Party policy, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that the right has used to drive a wedge between Labour and it’s working-class base. It is a liberal idea that conservatives on the left and right will be repelled by and it creates […]
Political debate done right
Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, September 7th, 2009 - 3 comments
The last video I posted had Democratic Congressman Barney Frank taking the fight to a woman in the audience of a townhall meeting who had just compared the proposed health care reforms to Nazism. He finished by saying: “trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to have a conversation with a […]
Hoist with his own petard
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, August 26th, 2009 - 10 comments
Last week, Tony Ryall used his time in the big chair for, surprise, surprise, a little preening. He decided to take credit for the 12,000 more elective surgeries conducted fiscal year, a year in which Labour set the budget and Ryall was only minister for the second half (of which he took one month off) Well, […]
Healthcare – need or wealth?
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, August 25th, 2009 - 44 comments
I don’t know if you’ve been following the healthcare debate in the States. Obama’s trying to bring in a plan that gets their ludicrously backward and complicated system part way towards the universal system every other developed country has. The Right’s going nuts. These next two clips prove that Jon Stewart is the smartest man […]
When preening goes wrong
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, August 21st, 2009 - 14 comments
Tony Ryall had his chance in the big chair yesterday, sitting in for the Prime Minister in Question Time. A chance for self-promotion, naturally. So the first question was from Jackie Blue to Ryall on elective surgery numbers: Dr Jackie Blue: What reports has the Minister seen of the results for the 2008-09 year just […]
On the scrap heap
Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, August 15th, 2009 - 26 comments
Call me old fashioned if you will, but I like the idea that reforms of government activity should be concieved and implemented by experts in the particular field in question. Which makes me wonder, why the hell has Tony Ryall appointed a financial guy, Murray Horn, to lead a ministerial review into the health system? […]
Folic acid fiasco
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, July 14th, 2009 - 30 comments
I just don’t see why medicating an entire population to prevent a handful of spina bifida cases, which will only work if women eat far more bread than they do, is a good idea. It’s such a grossly untargeted and unsophisticated approach. Saying ‘well many women don’t get enough folic acid and many pregnancies are […]
Nats can NOHSAC
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 14th, 2009 - 7 comments
One of the most fundamental rights at work is the right to come home at the end of the day healthy and safe. Now that work right, like so many others, has come under attack from National. NOHSAC, the National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee, was set up by Margaret Wilson in 2003 to […]
Big Mac nation
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 13th, 2009 - 99 comments
New Zealanders are now the third fattest nation in the world according to a report covered in today’s Christchurch Press. New Zealand faces a healthcare time-bomb as a new report ranks the country once touted for its outdoorsy, fit population as the third-fattest nation after Mexico and the United States. Health authorities fear disease and […]
Toast
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 12th, 2009 - 34 comments
What a horrifying sight today’s Q+A interview with Minister of Food Safety Kate Wilkinson made. It was a shameful performance from a media point of view, with Wilkinson looking ineffectual, implausible and well out of her depth. But from a political point of view it was gobsmacking. Wilkinson enthusiastically admitted that she didn’t agree with new […]
Double strength spin from Armstrong
Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, July 4th, 2009 - 14 comments
Former journalist John Armstrong runs National’s line on health today: The Cabinet’s loosening of rules on district health boards farming out non-urgent surgical operations to private hospitals is the logical step to take for a Government trying to get more from less…Monday’s decision is a step towards public and private providers eventually competing for the […]
Bill sez: ‘pay cuts for youse’
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 91 comments
Yesterday in Question Time, Bill English sent a message loud and clear to teachers, police, doctors, nurses, and all other public servants (‘frontline’ or not): under National, you’ll be getting pay-cuts, don’t expect cost of living adjustments, watch as your pay-packet buys less and less. Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has stated a number of […]
Nats give ticket-clipper to private hospitals
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, June 30th, 2009 - 8 comments
The government has changed the rules so that DHBs can make standing contracts for private hospitals to perform public elective surgeries. If DHBs start to contract large numbers of electives to these private providers, they will have to hire more medical staff and they’ll have to poach them from the public system. It’s not like […]
Who pays for swine flu?
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, June 18th, 2009 - 15 comments
A lot of people (like a million people or more according to the experts) are set to get sick from swine flu or not be able to go to work because the business is shut because of swine flu. What will happen to people’s incomes when they can’t work because of swine flu? The statutory […]
1600 Dead Again
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, May 17th, 2009 - 34 comments
Each year and every year, around 1600 New Zealanders die prematurely because we live in cold damp houses. This “excess winter death rate” is four times higher than the road toll. They die, most especially the young, unwell, disabled and elderly, of respiratory illnesses, strokes and heart attacks because far too much of our housing […]
When more is less
Written By: - Date published: 3:31 pm, May 8th, 2009 - 2 comments
Colin Espiner writes: “Another thing that’s being clearly signalled is that Labour’s previous spending promises in health and education won’t be honoured in the Budget. That $3.4 billion of spending Labour planned for 2009/2010… At the same time, Key and English are at pains to say that health and education spending will increase – and […]
Govt still refuses to act on youth smoking
Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, April 21st, 2009 - 42 comments
A couple of months ago you may remember Tony Ryall rejecting a health select committee recommendation that cigarettes and tobacco be kept out of sight in shops to help make them less inviting. On Sunrise this morning Oliver Driver wanted to know, in the light of fresh evidence, why Key’s government is still intent on […]
Mission-On off
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, March 26th, 2009 - 21 comments
If the definition of PC is doing things because they fit an ideology, not because they make sense, then it’s clear National and ACT are pushing their own PC agenda. It’s out with successful and value-for-money programs like Mission-On. For a small cost now in helping kids develop healthy eating habits we will save ourselves […]
Clean water worth paying for
Written By: - Date published: 5:28 am, March 26th, 2009 - 14 comments
Rodney Hide, who thinks nothing of spending billions on tax cuts for the well-off, is baulking at spending “some tens of millions” to improve water supply quality in rural New Zealand. A quick google of ‘water borne disease new zealand’ reveals the cost of doing nothing. There are 800,000 people drinking water that the Ministry of Health […]
How to reduce ACC costs without cutting cover
Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, March 11th, 2009 - 32 comments
The sensationalist tone of media releases regarding the financial situation at ACC has ignored the causes behind this so called ‘blow out’. The investment losses have been a big part of it but there is also a rising accident rate stemming from our ageing population and climbing obesity rates, which has been foreseen by medical experts for some time. We […]
National’s newspeak
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, March 5th, 2009 - 15 comments
When he’s not hard at work protecting the profits of tobacco giants by helping them peddle smokes to your kids, Ryall’s having a go at his own version of Newspeak. Stuff reports that there’s a list of banned words currently circulating in the Health Ministry. The list includes “public health, social change, inequalities and advocacy”. […]
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