National’s dodgy health announcements

You have to admire National’s ability to trumpet dodgy statistics and present a perception of reality far removed from what is actually happening.

This week we saw one example when despite an earlier promise not to do so Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Police Minister Mark Mitchell claimed that gang numbers had stabilised. This is even though they were told that the membership list should not be used for statistical purposes and that being removed from the list was a haphazard process. It was a case that gang members could check out any time they liked but they could never leave.

And to top off how disingenuous this claim was they knew that there had been a cull of the list and that  791 names had been removed between February and July of this year.

You would except better from an apparently god faring Christian.

But this deception blurs into insignificance compared to what they have been doing in health.

Recently National has trumpeted $30 million of new funding for 50 doctors and more nurses.

They also announced a new fund of $12 million to pay for minor repairs, replacement appliances, and new books and toys for children undergoing treatment.

They are going to need more bureaucrats to administer these funds.

Reti initially suggested that the funding was new funding but had to back track. It is coming out of cuts.

Health professionals were less than impressed.

Dr David Galler, who worked as an intensive care specialist at Middlemore Hospital for more than 30 years, described the announcement as a “sticking plaster” and said that it won’t fundamentally change anything.

Northland doctor Gary Payinda described the contribution as a “drop in the bucket” compared to what is needed to provide safe and adequate healthcare.

From Lucy Xia at Radio New Zealand:

It corrects about 3 percent of the doctors shortage, and probably around 3-4 percent of the nursing shortage,” he said, citing the Health New Zealand’s 2023 workforce plan which estimated that the country was short of 1700 doctors.

Dr Payinda said he estimated the public hospitals across the country would each be getting about half to one doctor per facility.

“I can’t help but think it sounds a little bit like the Hunger Games, where desperate regions and desperate hospitals are being pitted against each other, for what is essentially a 3 percent correction of the shortage, so these are folks fighting for crumbs, and it’s sad,” he said.

…

“What we need to have is an open and honest discussion, that there’s the 97 percent that we need to fix, there’s a huge problem, and instead we hear from the leaders of healthcare, that, I can only describe it as gaslighting, where they at times have said we’re over-recruited and over-budgeted for nurses, never telling you that the budget was woefully unrealistic,” he said.

To add to this sense of doom is news that people needing hospital treatment are not even making it onto the waiting list.

From Ruth Hill at Radio New Zealand:

GPs say patients who desperately need hospital treatment are increasingly not even making it onto waiting lists.

An excerpt of a letter to a GP from Palmerston North Hospital’s orthopaedic clinic earlier this year – obtained by RNZ – confirms some referrals are being knocked back due to “lack of resources”:

“This decision is forced upon us by a lack of sufficient resources to enable us to see all patients referred to us within the limits of the Ministry of Health waiting time targets.”

Until recently, former Palmerston North mayor Heather Tanguay, 80, was one of those people living in limbo, waiting for a specialist appointment about her painful hip.

“I would lead a hīkoi, if I could, of those waiting for surgery, but sadly we would not make it – so many are now unable to leave their homes,” she said.

What better way to reduce a waiting list than to refuse to let people go onto it. What’s the bet at some stage Reti trumpets a reduction in the number of people on the country’s hospitals waiting list’s.

And to add to the peception that the Government wants to stop measuring the effectiveness of the Public Health System comes news of mass redundancies in the Health IT sector.

The PSA broke the news today that nearly 1,500 Te Whatu Ora jobs were to be cut, including 47 percent (1120 jobs) of the entire Data and Digital group and 24 per cent (358 roles) of the National Public Health Service.

Health IT is already in crisis. It relied on long standing contractors to keep the system running. Their positions have already gone. It looks like we are running out of the capacity to even turn computers on and off.

And the cost savings are way more than the miniscule amounts recently set aside for new doctors.

This is the direct consequence of National’s failure to fund Health adequately. There is very little fat to trim. All National has managed to do is cut into muscle. The consequences are clear.

Just think of the efficiencies that could occur if we had support staff rather than doctors answering phones or cleaning toilets. But then National would be forced to admit that its blitzkreig on back office staff and “wasteful spending” only showed that it did not know what it was talking about.

And the end goal appears to be privatisation. As pointed out by No Right Turn David Seymour has suggested that Act will focus on health next year and no doubt he will seek to privatise it. First of all run it into the ground, then claim that the only option is to privatise.

Can National please let the adults take over and restore Health to its former state. And they need to commit to above inflation rates of increase of funding that allows also for population increase and the greater needs of an ageing population. Anything less than this will make things worse.