Another excellent piece by Dita De Boni:
Bottom line for mental health services
The most vulnerable are likely to suffer with the introduction of ‘social bonds’ for the private sector.
In the United States, about $2 billion each year is shaved off community mental healthcare funding and funnelled straight into the pockets of the private sector, one way or another.
That’s the model New Zealand wants to emulate, as revealed this week with a tiny taster in the shape of “social bonds” for mental health services. It’s the shape of things to come, as private companies continue to lobby for unfettered access to public monies earmarked for health, education, prisons, and so forth.
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The countries that have followed this path are what we are supposed to aspire to, despite variable outcomes (to put it kindly).
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Despite the rosy language about compassion, and caring for the most vulnerable, this scenario is about the selling off, chunk by chunk, of a public asset that’s taken decades of New Zealand taxpayer graft to build, and follows a well-worn roll-out. It starts with the underfunding of existing services, which leads to the perception the Government is “incapable” of running said service, leaving the way clear for private operators to swoop in and extract profits.
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Bill English, supposedly the most compassionate Cabinet member God ever put a skin around, has said “social bonds” would become “another tool in the Government’s investment approach, which aim[s] to improve the lives and prospects of the most vulnerable New Zealanders”. So far, the most vulnerable New Zealanders have had their state houses sold to property investors, their Relationships and Rape Crisis lines and other support services slashed and now their mental health services shuffled off to heartless multi-nationals. If that’s compassion, I’d hate to think what contempt looked like.
Go read the whole article at The Herald.
Then sign Labour’s open letter opposing the “social bonds” scheme…
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