health
Categories under health
- covid-19 (322)
- long covid (11)
- vaccines (11)
National’s ambition for your kids: a pie and a fag
Written By: - Date published: 8:09 pm, March 4th, 2009 - 44 comments
Last month Anne Tolley ditched the requirement that schools sell healthy food to kids. Not to be outdone, minister for tobacco Tony Ryall now wants to make cigarettes more accessible to them too. Ryall has rejected the health select committee recommendation that cigarettes and tobacco be kept out of sight in shops, choosing to favour […]
Electives
Written By: - Date published: 2:33 pm, February 26th, 2009 - 33 comments
If the 20 new elective surgery theatres Health Minister Tony Ryall has announced were going to be funded with new money, I would say ‘sounds good, let’s hope we can get the staff’. But Ryall is taking the money out of the existing budget and, so, I have a couple of issues to raise. Ryall continually says ‘the […]
Ryall sacks DHB Chair
Written By: - Date published: 5:47 pm, February 17th, 2009 - 31 comments
Health Minister Tony Ryall’s decision to sack Richard Thompson as Chairman of the Otago District Health Board on the grounds of historical fraud by a staff member has a nasty whiff of political interference to it. Considering the fraud began before Thompson became Chairman and it was caught and stopped under his watch the case […]
Fingers burned
Written By: - Date published: 11:02 am, January 29th, 2009 - 20 comments
Word is Tony Ryall is feeling a bit burned over the herceptin funding. Turns out the private specialists needed to administer the treatment are going to cost a wee bit more than he expected. That’s right, the scheme has been locked into legislation without being properly costed and now the government is stuck with the […]
Penny wise?
Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, January 21st, 2009 - 53 comments
Health Minister Tony Ryall has followed Paula Bennett’s* lead by cancelling a conference for PR purposes**. In terms of symbolism it’s great. Even though the per-person cost of the conference was low, and it’s not like doctors would want to spend their precious time at a conference were it pointless, and the cost was only […]
The housing question
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, December 1st, 2008 - 55 comments
Good housing is a foundation of a healthy society, and it is something that New Zealand has long lacked. Despite leading the world with our state housing in the 1930s, we have fallen behind. Housing in most other first world countries is much warmer and drier than here. That has important consequences; a study by […]
‘Cos I say so
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, November 26th, 2008 - 22 comments
Following Tony “cos I say so” Ryall’s media success with his plan to cut down waiting lists using the King Canute model of governance, the word around the traps is that several of National’s front bench are planning similar moves. Over the next few days expect the following: Simon Power will announce plans to tell […]
Ryall: do it or else
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, November 25th, 2008 - 32 comments
Health Minister Tony Ryall’s first policy will be to impose maximum waiting times for hospital emergency departments. No word on extra funding for achieving those goals (the UK achievement in shortening waiting times that Ryall cites came with large health budget increases) or what will happen if they are not met. Now, it’s great to […]
A clear choice on ACC
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, October 29th, 2008 - 48 comments
If you vote National, United Future, or ACT, you will be voting for the ACC system to be privatised. Consequences of this include: – $200 million in profits flowing offshore, according to John Key’s former employers Merril Lynch – higher levies on most workers, as private insurers cherry-pick the most profitable for themselves, leaving the […]
Wrong time for short-term thinking
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, October 14th, 2008 - 90 comments
National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me […]
Nats letting the facade drop
Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, October 10th, 2008 - 4 comments
We’ve been receiving reports of some appalling statements by National MPs on the campaign trail. They mesh with the arrogance and heartlessness that shines through in the secret agenda tapes. A writer reports on David Bennet’s performance at a forum on mental health policy in Hamilton: Mr Bennett came absolutely unprepared. he had no knowledge […]
Video: health policy like you’ve never seen it
Written By: - Date published: 4:02 pm, September 16th, 2008 - 39 comments
Fair to say this is video is pretty much out there…
Nats’ leaked health policy full of holes
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 pm, September 10th, 2008 - 10 comments
Having just read the National health policy and background paper released by Labour, a few things stand out to me. 1) There is no commitment to primary health-care. In fact, in 25 pages all it says is ‘we’ll do what’s already happening but we’ll re-name PHOs ‘Family Health Centres’, got ‘family’ in the name, don’t […]
Nat health policy: more money for rich, fewer for poor
Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, September 10th, 2008 - 60 comments
Jim Anderton is releasing elements of National’s health policy at Question Time: – Pharmac’s independent decisions could be overruled by politicians. – Private health insurance would be subsidised by the taxpayer. – No more money for public health National’s Jonathan Coleman also reportedly said that he doesn’t think GP fees are high enough.
Market failure
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, September 5th, 2008 - 27 comments
An article on Stuff today shows “Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale”. It’s based on research by Dr. Jamie Pearce and indicates that those who live in poor areas are more likely to die early than those in wealthy areas. Dr Pearce said the changing social and political environment disadvantaged poor people […]
Social Report shows Kiwis better off
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 31 comments
MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 […]
Tasteless
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, August 21st, 2008 - 75 comments
Thank God for those individuals of high morals who are at this moment whipping themselves into a frenzy over Pharmac’s decision to fund different varieties of condom as well as the plain ones it has funded for years. Where would be without you? Here’s the facts: – people have sex, young people have sex, people […]
Food Police State fails to eventuate
Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, June 4th, 2008 - 86 comments
Remember the tories and the Kiwiblog Right getting all flustered about the ‘Food Police’, when guidelines were announced to control junk food in school tuck shops? Remember how this was the Nanny State at its most perverse and surely one step from us all being fed a daily ration of Soylent Green? Well, now the […]
Butting out
Written By: - Date published: 2:43 pm, May 30th, 2008 - 16 comments
The Government has announced that the percentage of kiwi adults who smoke has fallen to 19.9%. The number of daily smokers is down from 25.2% of the adult population in 1996 to 18.7%. 150,000 people have given up in the last four years alone. The really good news is that the number of teenagers who are […]
Ryall: disgraceful
Written By: - Date published: 1:28 pm, May 30th, 2008 - 34 comments
National’s Tony Ryall has made a disgrace of himself, yet again. This time, by labelling a Government initiative to hasten improvements in the detection of colon cancer (which kills 1200 people a year) ‘a political stunt’. Here is Health Minister David Cunliffe and Ryall on National Radio: CUNLIFFE: I’m not doing this because of votes, […]
Hidden costs of private hospitals
Written By: - Date published: 2:39 pm, May 26th, 2008 - 13 comments
If you’re paying for your health care you’d expect good service wouldn’t you? The release of four health commissioner decisions over the weekend and covered by the Sunday Star Times, focused attention on private hospitals and the potential for catastrophic outcomes from relatively minor operations. According the report, Health Commissioner Ron Paterson says the cluster of cases […]
Telling porkies
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, May 22nd, 2008 - 44 comments
The Herald and National have started attacking every piece of government spending as pork-barrelling. Here’s some of what they’re calling ‘wasteful, needless spending’: $750 million of new health spending ($160 million for elective services) -Pork $700 million for Fast Forward Fund, food and pastoral sector research -Pork $665 million to buy the national rail operations […]
Government to fully fund virus vaccine
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, May 2nd, 2008 - 61 comments
Vernon Small reports that the PM is due to announce an immunisation programme for teenage girls targeting human papilloma virus. The programme is expected to start with girls aged 13 who will be offered free anti-cervical cancer immunisation as part of the $150 million government programme. The cost per person is expected to be around […]
I’ve got a solution, what’s the problem?
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, April 23rd, 2008 - 38 comments
The junior doctors’ strike is a difficult issue. On the one hand, these are highly valuable workers whom we can’t afford to lose overseas and they do work long hours in difficult conditions. On the other hand, the pay rise they want would cost $50 million and is well above what other medical professionals have […]
In praise of ACC
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, April 3rd, 2008 - 34 comments
It was nice to see this independent report into the ACC scheme by Price Waterhouse Coopers. Amongst the general positive comments was this observation: “The ACC under its current implementation structure performs as well or better than most other schemes we can observe around the world.” “No fault” models (such as ours) are associated with: […]
What’s up, Doc?
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, March 31st, 2008 - 19 comments
There have been a number of stories recently about the number of doctors heading overseas but they are usually sensationalist and lack context. The most important questions are how many doctors do we have working in New Zealand, and how does that relate to the size of the population? Fortunately, the Medical Council produces an […]
More on mental health
Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, March 18th, 2008 - 11 comments
After reading Steve’s piece about suicide prevention and the subsequent comments I’ve decided a short history lesson on this issue is needed. In the late eighties and early nineties the mental health model was shifted from an institutional model to the ‘recovery model’. Effectively this meant mental health patients were shifted from facilities such as […]
Focus on suicide
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 pm, March 17th, 2008 - 31 comments
The Government has launched a new suicide prevention action plan. Suicide is a tragedy that has touched several Ministers personally and it is good to see them putting more effort into confronting it. The aim of the strategy is to improve mental and social well-being for at risk people as well as providing more effective […]
The Hawke’s Bay DHB report
Written By: - Date published: 4:52 pm, March 17th, 2008 - 34 comments
The report into the Hawke’s Bay DHB is out and, like everything to do with DHBs, it makes boring reading. That tireless muck-raker, Tony Ryall, won’t like it but the report reveals no corruption just sloppy work by DHB board member Peter Hausmann and the DHB Board. Hausmann worked for Healthcare NZ on a tender for […]
Ryall reveals his hollowness on Agenda
Written By: - Date published: 3:54 pm, October 1st, 2007 - 13 comments
all_your_base has already posted on Tony Ryall’s weasel words on yesterday’s Agenda programme, but what struck me about the interview was Ryall’s utter hollowness on policy. Here he is farming out elective surgery to the private sector: GUYON: Okay let’s talk about elective surgery because the Ministry of Health says at the moment the private […]
Recent Comments