Woefully misinformed or intentionally mangling the truth?
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9:24 am, July 30th, 2024 - 26 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, health, national, same old national, uncategorized -
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The Health sector crisis continues to dominate recent news.
And the Government has continued its blitzkreig of apportioning blame to everyone but itself.
But there is a growing response from health professionals suggesting that what the Government has been telling you may not be actually correct, particularly with the state of Northland’s hospitals.
For instance yesterday Whangarei Emergency Doctor Gary Parinda said this about the Government’s claims there were no cuts to health’s frontline:
There are two options as I see it. One is that they are woefully misinformed and living in a fantasy land. The other is that they are intentionally mangling the truth for political purposes. And I don’t know which it is but either is equally unacceptable”
And the following is a question put to Northland’s clinical director of rural hospitals Dr Pragati Gautama and her response:
What would you say we have repeatedly heard that these funding cuts are not going to affect frontline services?
I can’t believe it quite frankly. How can they say that when I can’t staff the ED overnight in Dargaville. Of course it’s affecting frontline.”
And this morning Salaried Medical Specialists’ Northland president Dr Eugene Fayerberg said this to a suggestion that Te Whatu Ora is working on recruitment:
What you heard yesterday was a lot of misleading information from the Commissioner, from the Director and from the Minister and I challenge them to really come up with good solutions that will solve the problem not just in the short term but also in the long term to continue to provide equitable healthcare for all New Zealanders and especially Northlanders.
He was then asked which part was misleading. His response was that comments about recruitment were incorrect and he pointed out there were not many job vacancies being advertised. He also referred to cuts in the amounts paid to locums and how this was also affecting doctor availability.
Other aspects of what the Government has recently said have been shown to be, shall we say, inaccurate.
Luxon claiming that Health NZ lacks financial literacy is pretty rich from someone who cannot recognise a management layer if he fell over it. Luxon’s repeated claim there was 14 levels of management in health has shown what should probably be described as the intentional mangling of the truth.
When questioned about this he said that it was “a bloated mess, it’s a hell of a mess”. It certainly is, but this is because of National’s hatchet job on the health sector.
And in what is catastrophically poor timing it has been revealed that the Government set aside $216 million to fund the halving of exise duty paid by Phillip Morris for heated tobacco products.
The cut is justified by the claim that more smokers will use this alternative. But there is no guarantee that the cuts will be passed onto the consumer. And Phillip Morris have a monopoly on the product.
What is really weird is that the tax collected from HTPs was only $3.62 million in 2022 and $5.97 million in 2023. How on earth did Casey Costello persuade the cabinet to put aside 44 times the average amount collected by the tax?
This sum could have solved the Northland Doctor shortage.
And it shows what the Government’s priorities are. And how it will manufacture a crisis for political advantage rather than dealing with the issue in a way that a responsible Governmet would.
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Kua hinga te manawa kairākau o Te Rua Tekau Ma Waru Tiwhatiwha te po! Kakarauru i te po! Ka rapuhia kei hea koe kua riro! Haere e te Ika a Whiro ki o tini hoa kua ngaro atu ki te Pō ...2 weeks ago
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When will National wake up to the fact that doctors and nurses, the so-called "Frontline staff", can do their jobs effectively only if they are backed up by efficient support staff? – the people that National calls "bureaucracy".
National are supreme b…s artists.
Telehealth?
Dr Reti's mind still frantically busy figuring how to deal with his and Luxons "14 layers" lie !
A video consult is hardly going to put a stent in, more people are going to kark it needlessly with such practices. Micky is onto it with his comment…
“What is really weird is that the tax collected from HTPs was only $3.62 million in 2022 and $5.97 million in 2023. How on earth did Casey Costello persuade the cabinet to put aside 44 times the average amount collected by the tax? This sum could have solved the Northland Doctor shortage.”
It is quarter way through the 21st Century and enough of our fellow NZers have managed to elect these CoCs who put the Tobacco industry before public health. “Dr Cigaretti” was a fun meme until it became obvious the amount of truth in it.
Those pesky healthcare professionals, daring to challenge the official narrative. Ungrateful so and so's.
They'd better watch out because they are all part of those bloated 14 layers!!!
That includes the patients. They are also included as a layer of bureaucracy. How dare they get sick and injured and fill up the hospital wards.
A reminder Heated Tobacco Products are banned outright in the EU and countries like Australia.
Australia calls them "poison."
Yes.
"Nicotine is classified in Australia as a Schedule 7 substance – “dangerous poison” – under the Standard for the Uniform Scheduling of Medicines and Poisons (SUSMP). The classification prevents the sale of all consumer products with nicotine, including e-cigarettes and white pouch snus as well as heated tobacco products."
https://tobaccointelligence.com/the-ban-stays-australia-confirms-the-permanent-prohibition-of-heated-tobacco/
Whereas here the CoC is quite happy to profit from the poison in a desperate revenue grab that still doesn't fund their tax cuts.
Pretty much sums them up, call it 'choice' bang on about a black market that may or may not exist and swallow hard as this rats not going down easily.
They are poison. But they are a lesser poison than conventional smoking.
Heated tobacco: a new review looks at the risks and benefits (theconversation.com)
[please explain your thinking rather than expecting people to read links to understand your point. Quotes and links are to add context and context, they’re not the way to argue a point – weka]
mod note
Fair enough.
The issue is the relative harm of 'conventional' smoking devices as opposed to HTP's.
The article I liked to examines 11 studies, including over 2,600 participants.
The article states:
Our new review covers data from 11 studies with over 2,600 people. The headline finding is that people who switched from cigarettes to heated tobacco had lower levels of exposure to harmful chemicals than those who kept smoking, but higher levels of these toxins than those who stopped using tobacco altogether.
These products are not safe, by any definition. However the FDA have approved claims that the IQOS system (used in HTP's) significantly reduces the production of harmful and potentially harmful chemicals. And Scientific studies have shown that switching completely from conventional cigarettes to the IQOS system significantly reduces your body’s exposure to harmful or potentially harmful chemicals.” Both quotes taken from FDA Authorizes Marketing of IQOS Tobacco Heating System with ‘Reduced Exposure’ Information | FDA, which is linked to from the Conversation article.
How long till Luxon declares that you cant get great outcomes for NZers if you run Health "like a Polish shipyard" and it will be 1984 deja vu all over again?
First do no harm, Dr Reti. If you work for a bunch of cancer stick sales folk and liars, be honest and resign.
Stop the fight, Gerry and put these on a meme/billboard etc etc
She asked: “Does his private health insurance cover injuries sustained while being thrown under the bus by the prime minister?”
Wow. Stunner.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350360916/trade-minister-hot-water-after-shouting-youre-not-mexico-now
Doctor Reti explains……
Well, seems Doctor Reti…has left the building. On this and other issues. (14 Layers ?)
I suppose his mind is still blown by the number of layers…or maybe since Luxon threw him under a bus ?
Keep up the hard Questions. The CoC crew not handling it too well.
Well, seems Doctor Reti…has left the building. On this and other issues. (14 Layers ?)
Well, that's one "layer"* we can certainly do without.
* can mean a chicken (one kept for laying eggs)
And the eggs are not even of the Curates variety…moreso these, when cracked, release a grey/green noxious miasma . Uuurgh.
The UnHealth NACT1 team.
here is the reality of the governments mishandling of health. "we've already lost loads of doctors". At a time when our health system is badly understaffed, with significant staff shortages, we are losing out on staff who want to come here due to budget cuts.
Emails seen by RNZ show Te Whatu Ora recruitment teams are getting mixed messages from its directors on who is covering relocation costs for overseas hires, paying for job ads and hiring through recruitment agencies.
The health sector is struggling with a lack of workers and cuts to the budget from the government, which says it is keen to get spending under control.
It has been hoped that overseas workers would help fill the gaps caused by a severe workforce shortage in healthcare.
But a recruitment worker at Health New Zealand – who RNZ has agreed not to name – said they had have been told to hold off on any relocation cost offers or placing advertisements until they got a clear answer from above.
"Usually we'd pay for flights, hotels, but that's all stopped," they said. "If it costs money, we can't do it.
"[But] we're not allowed to tell [applicants] that. We basically go through the whole recruitment process, interviews, references, etc, until the offer stage."
Then the process would stall, with emails to approving managers to finalise the hire often going unanswered, and applicants eventually giving up and going elsewhere.
"We've already lost loads of doctors," the recruitment worker said.
The media needs to wake the F up here regarding this manufactured crisis and hold them to account.
Those who depart are unlikely to return and nobody is taking their place.
Exactly but not for want to applicants but because the nats n spendmore is starving the health system of money
The $216 figure is nonsense. From the RNZ piece:
" the tax collected on HTPs was only $3.62 million in 2022 and $5.97 million in 2023."
So how can that possibly rise to $216m? Well, according to the MoH:
"There is no evidence to support their use as a quit smoking tool”, and yet to get the $216m they are assuming thousands of people are switching to HTP's.
They can't have it both ways.
[You appear to be conflating various ‘theys’ eg Caucus and the MoH. Please slow down and make more of an effort to explain your thinking clearly. – weka]
mod note.
The 'they' I refer to is the MoH. the sentence that begins with "There is no evidence to presents two contradictory positions by the Ministry:
They can't both be correct.
Its all being revealed. (well, was plain as the dogs bollocks really)
Luxon looking less and less in control…..its all turning to bad egg smell for NACT1….
Luxon, Dr "underabus" Reti and the other NACT1 crew will, of course, dissemble about this.
IMO they have started something that will generate much ill feeling towards ..them and their political parties
Of course it will be off a ducks back personally..but they will be taking a big hit politically.
More backlash to come….