by Kevin Hague
I’ve had two opportunities to question Tony Ryall today about priorities in the health sector, and his answers reveal a real mastery of evasion and obfuscation but little or no grasp of what is genuinely important in health.
First up was his appearance before the Health Select Committee to answer questions about the Budget (although in practice questions tend to be very wide-ranging). I started by asking whether his statement on Budget Day that the increase in Vote:Health would “help protect” DHBs from real terms inflation meant that he accepted that the Budget increase was insufficient to fund the drivers of health costs (inflation, population increase and aging) to enable the sector to stand still. He answered “no”. The Ministry had calculated that $509m would be necessary to stand still, and the Budget had allocated $512m. And anyway, DHBs are expected to make efficiency improvements so even if inflation was 2%, the Government wouldn’t give them 2% but would still claim that it had funded them for inflation.
I asked about the calculation by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and the CTU that $555m would have been necessary to stand still — what was wrong with their analysis? He couldn’t tell me but will provide detail later. Should be interesting.
I pointed out that a substantial part of the new $512m allocated was, in fact, for new initiatives, so wasn’t even available to help keep up with inflation and demographic change. He responded by talking about how Spain and Ireland were making really big cuts to their health budgets. I asked about his response to the fact that Treasury and the Reserve Bank are forecasting inflation of nearly 4% (before the GST increase is factored in) adding another $58m to the amount necessary to stand still. More about Ireland and Spain.
Then in the House I asked about his response to the recommendations of the Public Health Advisory Committee on improving child health outcomes. Well of course he hasn’t decided yet. Further questions are batted away with blithe assurances that the Government is improving child health by having an immunisation target which the sector is doing well against. Oh to have had enough questions to ask about the other child health targets he has scrapped, or to probe his belief that immunisation was an adequate response to the socioeconomic inequalities driving poor child health! He, alone amongst New Zealanders I think, doesn’t believe the Budget will worsen socioeconomic inequality.
I asked him about rheumatic fever. It’s largely a disease of poverty. The report highlights a massively disproportionate impact on poor, Maori and Pasefika kids, and an overall rate 14 times the OECD average. 14 times! Why hasn’t the Government done anything about it? He claims they have done “various things” about rheumatic fever, but when asked to be specific responds with vague generalisations. Oh to have more questions again!
Let’s be clear: this government has adopted a Budget which will increase socioeconomic inequalities, and these will make most New Zealanders, including children, sicker. At the same time they have cut health funding in real terms and, to make matters worse, have especially cut community-based health services in order to fund their flagship services at the shiny, expensive, high-tech end of the services spectrum, heedless of where value for money lies. If the Government were even slightly interested in improving child health then the PHAC report is a great starting point, which has at its heart reducing socioeconomic inequalities. Ryall does not have other advice to the contrary, and I await with great interest, but little hope, his response to the report’s recommendations.
Published in Featured | Health & Wellbeing by Kevin Hague on Wed, June 16th, 2010
Tags: children, CTU, health, Health inequality, Kevin Hague, ssociation of Salaried Medical Specialists inequality, The machine that goes ping, tony ryall
More posts by Kevin Hague | more about Kevin Hague
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Ryall’s response kind of reminds me of this sketch from Monty Python: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arCITMfxvEc
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does yrslf and the greens much credit…
there are not many who can rattle ryall..
…and you had him like a mongoose hypnotised by a snake…
..that he was trying to defend the indefensible ..
didn’t make it any easier for him…
..this is a good/powerful/resonant issue for you to continue in this vein…
i am actually cheered by the performances of the green mp’s in questiontime…
..in the main…they are having/using good follow-up questions…
…to some considerable effect..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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How the heck do the Greens propose to pay for Healthcare costs at current levels over the next two decades..? They are set to rise 7% – 9% a year, meaning they will double every 7 years… It’s just not sustainable without massive tax rises or a cut in the level of service provided…
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You are quite correct that rheumatic fever is a disease of poverty. Why then do you think that the Minister of Health, of all people, should have a solution? There is no economically feasible health initiative that will rectify this – only long-term socioeconomic ones.
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The way Ryall is looking at the health system is very numbers focussed. Operations here, A and E’s opening here. His vision is the shonky ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
A proper health system should help people not get sick in the first place.
What you’re saying is that the current way of spending on health is not sustainable and I’m sure Kevin will agree with you. More money needs to be put into public health programs and putting public health as an operating focus in most of the other ministries. Eg: housing: so we have warm dry homes; transport: so we have fewer cars on the road and more active transport options; Agriculture: so we have clean healthy food that is farmed in a manner which doesn’t mess up our water.
Simple as that
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@raptor – I have shamelessly shared that link on Facebook. In fact i previously thought of that sketch when Tony Ryall pumped more money into PET scans, at the same time that DHBs around the country are cutting back community-based home support workers for older people, and mental health workers for example.
@ phil – thanks very much. Greatly appreciated!
@ Jeremy – Indeed, every society in fact has to confront the problem that resources will always be limited (no matter how much Government puts in) and need effectively unlimited. Whatever the Health budget there will always be someone who would benefit from a health service that cannot be afforded. What is then important is choosing what values are used to determine who gets what, and I have supported the Government’s intention to have the National Health Committee (on which I used to serve) lead a national process/conversation aimed at developing public understanding and a broad consensus on the approach to prioritisation. I am also a fan of Gareth Morgan’s book “Health Cheque” (although I don’t agree with all his conclusions). Particularly of note is his focus on investing in services that deliver the best value for money. He goes on to say that the best value for money comes from public health and primary care services, while the most highly specialised services, often delivered to provide short and low-quality extensions of life at end stage, present rlatively poor use of resources. Just a quick note that this is the reverse of what the current Minister has been doing.
So all that means our approach is acknowledge the problem and getting as much out of the available resources as possible. I also note that as far as I can recall every survey asking New Zealanders if they would be prepared to higher taxes to get better health and education services has found that they would. In our current circumstances though there is no need for higher taxes – just spend a little less that the $26 BILLION and more set aside for roading projects.
@MacDoctor – My series of questions was about the PHAC report which recommends comprehensive cross-Government initiatives for improving child health, and continued the theme we have been pursuing for quite a while now of the links between socioeconomic inequalities and adverse outcomes in health and many other areas. I contend that the Government has shown little interest in reducing those inequalities that lead to diseases like rheumatic fever, and that the Budget will, in fact, increase them. It was Tony Ryall who claimed that the Government was doing a variety of things to combat rheumatic fever, so i just asked him what they were! I guess he could have claimed that the question fell outside his Ministerial responsibility!
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Perhaps the rising health costs from an ageing population can be mitigated by reducing health costs in other areas
1. using the money saved ending the depreciation write-off for landlords (and or from a CGT as well) to allow landlords to claim insulation and energy efficient heating investment as a repair and maitenance cost – currently few landlords are prepared to spend any of their own money (despite the partial subsidy). Healthier homes will reduce health care costs
2. Improving air quality standards
(see http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2010/06/not-cost-effective.html#links)
3. Funding the National HB to make investments in the regional HB’s operations to reduce the long term health costs to AHB’s – these investments appear to be beyond the capacity of AHB’s with limited budgets (similar to a poor person unable to finance insulation despite the longer term cost savings).
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Keep the heat on, Kevin! There is much here to refocus the Governments attention on what really matters in health and they obviously still haven’t got it!
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The last few whose parents would never bother to actually get their children vaccinated anyway, cost the health system a substantial amount of money.
While they feel their work does some good with some kids, overall they are very demoralised as they see a large number of children whose parents effectively don’t really care, and don’t look after their kids. While they might fix something this week, next week it will be some other ailment that would have been prevented with basic proper care.
Quite a number are ready to leave, not because of lack of resources, but because they feel they are repeatedly bashing their heads against a brick wall of dysfunctional parents, and effectively not making any real difference (and nurses have an inbuilt need to make a difference).
As they said, money won’t make much difference to parents who simply don’t bother looking after their kids. Where it might help is housing and insulation.
The only thing that will make a real difference with this group of people is a change in their attitudes and lifestyle.
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Kevin – $26 billion for roading?
That’s fantastic that they can spend that much when the 2009 budget for all transport and communications was only $2.3 billion (compared to $13 billion for health).
They must be magicians to be able to do that.
Figures are from
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/2009/taxpayers/b09-taxpayers.pdf
where you’ll see that the
- lowest 20% of earners pay just 1% of total income tax
- lower 58% of earners pay just 15% of total income tax
- lower 80% of earners pay just 35% of total income tax
- just over half of total income tax is paid by the top 14%, just under half by the bottom 86%
And we get posts on this site saying we don’t have a progressive tax system.
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aaah…bullshit phota – you pull figures from a place where the sun does not shine, whatever your fervent dreams.
The biggest Tax Avoiders have the biggest income rate – the Boss says I can’t publish the details – but it is the true definition of Capitalism (that holy of Holy Greed)
Hell! – Looks like I own a Winery I forgot all about.
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Photon
You omit the other side of that equation, you know the one. The one where the top 10% OWN 50% of everything and the top 10% own half of everything
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/income-and-wealth-distribution/5/3
…and that was in 2001, things have gotten worse.
The top 1% making on average 10 times my income, pays a rate 25% lower than what I pay.
No Photon… we do NOT have anything like a properly progressive tax here in NZ… not even close. The data is skewed and 10% deciles don’t show much of the detail… but Cullen made no bones about being uninterested in making the tax system more fair in terms of the people at the very top. Smart man, poor on the human factor of indignation, you know the one…. where people don’t mind pulling their a larger share if they are sure that the other guy is pulling his own larger share?
How many fncking yachts do you need to water ski behind? How many multi-million dollar rooms do you need to sleep in?
Why the fnck don’t people recognize that inequality is the very devil himself when it comes to social problems. Yeah, you have to have SOME or there’s no incentive to get out of bed, but if you look at countries by GINI coefficient and the societies that go with them and then look at what has been done to THIS country it makes you want to cry.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/distribution_of_family_income_gini_index_2009_0.html
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/161.html
The countries I want to be like run *roughly* between 25 and 30 on the index… I’ve seen what is happening in the USA. I left partly because of the changes there. “Ownership society” my left _ _ _ _) _ ! The reason the term is used is because the word “slavery” has bad connotations.
So don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes. There isn’t enough in New Zealand.
BJ
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BJ and photonz1
It actually doent matter how you break the tax take down and play the silly game of who contibutes their fair share or not.
The basic problem remains. State expenditure is far higher than the possible tax take even if you taxed ALL at 60% to 90%.
Concentrate on living within the tax take and THEN ratchet up or down the tax payed by the various income groups.
And BJ, you can never have enough boats to water ski behind.
The real question to ask is how can the state harness the energy that drives the boat owner to “work” and generate the income to buy the “toys” plus freedom of time to use them, for the better of ALL society.
Is there a better way to focus that private energy into public good?
Seems like envy is not the best option.
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My willingness to work hard for my next buck, which I get some 60 cents of, is not enhanced by my neighbour’s next buck coming to him 70 percent intact, when my neighbor has ten times my income and wealth, becomes a lot less. There is a sense of injustice in that. Not envy.
That’s just the way things are Gerrit, it is not going to go away. Nor is it sensible for the society to “ignore it”. Such inequality eats away at the respect that makes people willing to respect each other.
The chances for the guy at the bottom of the ladder are stuff-all to start with and the fact that the guys at the top create legal ways to cheat besides simply makes it more reasonable for the rest to cheat (legally or illegally), drop out (drugged into insensibility), or turn to more active forms of crime.
The social ills track inequality quite well Gerrit, and the reason has nothing to do with “envy”. I don’t envy someone who has more than me. That simple concern is not in play. I get severely p!ssed off however, if someone on 10 times my income is paying tax at LOWER effective rates than I do. I am p!ssed at the STATE for arranging things so he gets that privilege of wealth. My willingness to voluntarily pay tax is eroded.
I am p!ssed at people who defend the wealthy as somehow deserving to pay a smaller percentage than I… because they “produce more” ? when in fact their wealth stems from “ownership” and their production pales before what most of us who actually work for a living manage.
You are RIGHT that the amount of tax is only part of the problem and that the state has to learn to live within its means.
That is one damned important part of the deal, but it has stuff-all to do with the inequality issue raised by Photon. Which is basically an expression of ONE side of the two that make the basis of a successful society.
I don’t measure using GDP, I don’t complain about how much someone has… but I do pay attention to GINI and how the percentage of the burden I carry compared to other people.
Considerations of what the income and outgo of the country is are not involved in those things. Gozinta equals Gozouta… and how we get there in terms of taxes and cuts, is of interest, but it is NOT related to the inequality problem here.
respectfully
BJ
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Now I’d better actually go earn some of that salary
BJ
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Same, but that is the trouble with CAD. To easy to have as few blogs open when designing components and creating toolpaths.
Working on a triple tree front fork system to mate a Harley roadster fork to a japer frame.
Nice to have interesting things to do this morning.
Have a good day BJ.
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Just glanced over what I babbled and realize I need my coffee too
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bjchip and mark – counting WFF, the bottom 40% of earners effectively pay NO INCOME TAX.
How much lower do you want to pay than ZERO contribution in income tax?
What a stuffed up idealogy when you are highly pissed off at people who contribute MANY TIMES MORE than you do for health, benefits and education.
They’re contributing many many times more than they will ever use – unlike a large part of the population, who use more services than they will ever pay for.
And they people getting a free ride want to pay less and others to pay more.
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photonz, the lower tax rates on income are financed by GST (15%) which even those who pay “no tax” pay. And while those under the median income with 2 children do not pay “income tax”, this is only for part of their working lives. For some it is only while one of the parents is out of full-time work, for others they still paid income tax before they had children and they will return to this many years before they retire.
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Photon
How much lower do you want to pay than ZERO contribution in income tax?
Don’t shift me into the lower 40% mate. You know better. I pay top rate and I don’t MIND that top rate… it’s fine with me. It just isn’t good enough for people on 10x my income. I get annoyed with some of the things it is spent on, but I understand my responsibilities. A lot of them clearly do not.
What a stuffed up ideology that supports the notion that someone who makes 10 times what I do should pay tax at a rate 15% or more LOWER than the rate at which I pay?
Understanding that whatever the cost of government is –
1. Anything that isn’t paid now is borrowed from our children.
2. Of the amount that the government gets out of us taxpayers, anything that one group does not pay, the rest of us have to make up.
Which explains the camel-hump in the tax schedules without WFF and the lack of CGT or any higher tax brackets than the one that catches the top 10-12% of the population.
Which explains the continuing willingness of folks in my income group to try anything at all to get out from under the tax bracket that is so commonly avoided by the wealthy. The income tax distributions so clearly show the rorts being in place that it is almost criminal negligence on the part of government, both labour and this one, to have failed so completely to clean it up for so long.
Nats got points from me for trying to fix the housing mess, which was the worst of it, but they didn’t do well overall… not at all.
The people getting a “free ride” aren’t the problem in general, that you seem to think they are. Most get off the dole as soon as possible. The long-term folks usually have a reason. The ones who make it a lifestyle choice can be addressed by giving something other than money… and not a single bit of that is relevant to whether someone getting a heap of money pays or avoids their proper share of the tax burden
Stop trying to change the subject.
BJ
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The people you are angry about are making a contribution that is many times the value of your contribution to NZ.
I also know people that make a considerable amount of money through their businesses and pay little more tax than the average person. However that is because most of the money stays in the business.
And in the meantime their busineeses are growing, employing more people, paying more GST, paying more PAYE for all the workers, paying more ACC, and spending money with other businesses on services and materials.
If they ever want to take money out for personal use, it will be taxed.
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Not such a great place to raise kids from No Right Turn.
The study – The Best Start in Life: Achieving effective action on child health and wellbeing [PDF] – found a significant gradient in health outcomes and life chances between rich and poor households. The richest households ranked near the top of the scale for child welfare, up there with Norway and Japan. The poorest ones were down there with Turkey and Mexico, barely developed countries. And because there are vastly more poor households than rich ones, our overall statistics are bad:
Out of 30 OECD countries, New Zealand was ranked 21st for infant mortality, 29th for measles immunisation rates, 20th for the percentage of children living in poor households and 17th for the percentage of children in overcrowded houses.
New Zealand was also fourth to bottom among all OECD countries for injury deaths among one to four-year-olds, had 14 times the average OECD rate of rheumatic fever, five to 10 times the rate of whooping cough and pneumonia compared with the United Kingdom and United States and four to six times the rate of child maltreatment compared with the best countries.
(Not mentioned in the report: we rank second-worst in the rich world in UNICEF’s overall index of child well-being. The only country worse than us is the UK.)
To solve this, the PHAC recommends increased investment in child health (currently half the OECD average), free 24-hour primary healthcare for children, and a Minister for Children to advocate for child welfare in Cabinet. These are all sensible suggestions. Quite apart from the immediate welfare issues, which are worthy in themselves, children are our future – investing in them is an investment in New Zealand’s future. Healthier children today means healthier adults tomorrow, which means lower long-term health costs for the government. But why would National be interested in that?
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2010/06/not-such-great-place-to-raise-kids.html#links
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SPC – a lot of the problem is with parents. My wife drives for hours to outlying towns to do vaccination “clean-ups” – the kids who have been missed.
Appointments are made with parents, and all the time there’s parents who simply don’t bother showing up.
They then try and do mop ups by doing individual home vists to really dodgy homes (witnessed two violent incidents last week).
They frequently find things like rotting teeth in kids, toddlers home being looked after by primary children while mums at the pub – case after case of parents who simply don’t look after their children.
While you can try to use stats to make things sound as bad as possible, considering our income position in the OECD, we do ok at many things – i.e. we spend a higher percentage of GDP on health than the OECD average (slightly higher % than Sweden). While your OECD report says we are 21 for child mortality, another OECD health report that came out around the same time says we are slightly better than the OECD average.
You cherry pick the worst stats you can find but leave out positive stats from the same report – fourth best for childrens educational outcomes wioth more equality in those outcomes than those above us.
our lives are 14 months longer than the OECD average,
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photonz1,
While I’m generally in favour of the argument you are presenting, just a slight correction.
If company profit is being returned to the shareholder it will be a taxable payment so technically you are right
However the total tax payed by the shareholder is no greater then anyone else as he offsets the tax paid by the business against his own tax liability (or vice versa)
The business does pay the tax on the profit but that profit is not taxed again effectively when returned to the shareholder.
The shareholder pays no more (and no less) tax then the person working for the company.
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Photon
Your bias and deference towards people who HAVE wealth is showing. Have you always worshiped mammon?
I’ve known a lot of capable people. A very few even more capable than myself. In any normal enterprise they earn anywhere up to 5 times the average salary. In banking and as directors of companies people far LESS capable can get upwards of 20 times the average salary. There is no way in hell this can be earned. I don’t begrudge the money so much as I recognize them as profiting from legal (and sometimes illegal) distortions of the monetary system.
The ones who earn the money, interestingly, seldom bother messing about for tax purposes. They earn money, they pay taxes… just like I do. That applies to everyone up to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs back in the USA and the senior researchers at NASA JPL.
The ones who however, have more money coming in than they can possibly spend? The ones who once elicited the comment from the chairman of Sony that he would be “embarrassed” to have such an amount paid to him? They make cheating into an art form.
Here in NZ it is not so bad, but it is still the case that ownership rather than work determines the paypackets at the high end. Ownership however, does not contribute a fncking thing to the economy of the country Photon.
When someone re-invests money in NZ production, that’s a fair cop and they don’t get taxed on it… but that isn’t what usually happens IS it. The money leaves the country for foreign investment, or goes into property here, or is otherwise sheltered but not working, much as the person who gets it is sheltered and not working.
Not doing the country a lick of good.
I have nothing but contempt for people who assume that the getting of money equates to productive labour. I respect people who earn it, and they in general respect me, but the money someone gets is not always an indication of what they earn and in the top money getters, is not ever. The notion that somehow the graduation of tax should stop at the border of the 10th decile is total fncking nonsense and the notion that the folks in the 85th to 95th centile should pay a higher rate than those in the 95-100th centiles is outright lunacy.
BJ
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Gerrit says “However the total tax payed by the shareholder is no greater then anyone else as he offsets the tax paid by the business against his own tax liability (or vice versa)”
Virtually all dividends I get have already been taxed at my highest tax rate.
If I get dividends paid with a lower tax rate, it all goes onto my end of year return, and I will get taxed extra to make up any shortfall.
It’s no different to if I do overtime, have a second job, or get interest from my bank savings.
It’s basically the same as way paye is handled for wages. It’s taxed at source.
However there is a double tax if you consider the income used to buy shares has already been taxed.
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bjchip says “Ownership however, does not contribute a fncking thing to the economy of the country Photon.”
What about ownership of all those companies that provide services, export goods, etc.
What about ownership of buildings and land that allows the businesses leasing them to spend their money on expanding their businesses instead of it all being sucked up in land or buildings?
You also seem to miss the point that ownership for many people has come from working very hard. What they own has been bought by money that has ALREADY been taxed, usually at the highest rate, and will be again whenever they take money back out in dividends.
I do think they need to tighten up loopholes around residential property, but it is a very tricky area because if it’s done hastily you’ll only end up with hugely increased rents.
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Why is there a discussion about the merits of the wealthy on this thread. Is it because any discussion about the needs of the many being met from public services gets hijacked to a discussion about the necessity of the many to go without – so the few (who are better than the rest of the people) can do more for us by doing even better for themselves.
All hail trickle down and disparage the poor for being in need, as its all their own fault, … and helping them would (be unaffordable, cause debt that would ruin the environment and cause the sale of public assets)require an increase in tax and that would set the wrong incentives …
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Kevin , keep at it. These are great questions. In reply to the person who commented that rheumatic fever is a disease of poverty, how can a minister of health deal with it? Well, that’s simple, he asks his colleagues around the cabinet table.
Our incidence of rheumatic fever is a downright, bl–dy disgrace – no words are strong enough to express my outrage and distress that such a disease exists in this community at the rate it does, it is third-world stuff and every thinking New Zealander should be hanging their head in shame at the this indictment on our society. I write this as a medical professional, indeed our profession shares some of the blame. Perhaps the problem is that most New Zealanders don’t think, this certainly includes are present National administration, but what was even worse was these levels of rheumatic fever have persisted for years, even under nominally left-wing Labour administrations. Just what does it take to get the conscience of a New Zealander pricked? Every few months we’ll hear some appalling statistic or other related to the misery we inflict on the tens of thousands of the most disadvantaged of our children, it’ll make a headline, then will be forgotten about. The media won’t bring our leadership to account, and our leadership continues to avoid the issue, as exemplified by the post above. There are times that I am ashamed to be a New Zealander, and in this matter, I am ashamed.
To put this in perspective, last year we imported about $6 billion worth of oil to fuel our addiction to the motor car, we buy on average 120,000 cars a year, at a rough value of $2.5 billion, We imported 300,000 large flat panel TVs last year, say $600 million. It is patent nonsense to suggest that we are not well enough off to be able to afford the costs of important health care.
It is simply a matter of priorities. Our society considers cars, oil and large flat panel TVs more important than the welfare of our children. Perhaps then it is not surprising that when some of these children grow up that they consider our possessions rather less important than we do. There is a moral and ethical vacuum in our society that is that allows successive governments in New Zealand to ignore the concerns of the underprivileged and instead pander to those with the most strident voices.
Rheumatic fever is an almost completely avoidable disease of childhood, no advanced, ethical and caring society should have more than a handful of cases any year. For us then, our levels of rheumatic fever are not just a measure of the health of our society, but a measure of the moral purpose with which run our society, on that basis, we measure appallingly badly, and have done so for many, many years.
This morning, Chris Laidlaw interviewed an epidemiologist from the UK, Richard Wilkinson, about his new book on the damage our unequal societies – “the Spirit Level, why more equal societies always do better”. New Zealand is now about the fifth most unequal society in the OECD, a saddening state of affairs. This is a letter I wrote to Chris after I heard the interview (don’t forget you can go to the Radio NZ site and download the programme) I think it needs no explanation.
Dear Chris and team,
Inequality in nations is due to a basic lack of ethical and moral concern for the citizen’s welfare. The Anglo-Saxon nations in particularly are guilty of abandoning vast numbers or ordinary people to the increasing unfairness of the neo-liberal, market driven economy, that even now is failing so spectacularly. I was disappointed as to how short and shallow this interview was – you will know how many times I have written to you about these matters, and the urgency with which we need to question so many of the underlying tenets of our increasingly dysfunctional economic, political and social system. An hour of discussion with Richard Wilkinson, and a more searching examination of his findings and conclusions would have been more worthwhile, and enlightening. But hey, why bother, we’re in New Zealand, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a bale of no 8 wire, a stack of 2 x 4s and a few sycophantic handshakes with a flattering Chinese politician.
Yours faithfully,
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Thanks John – I completely agree with you!
Just for the record, I haven’t yet received the analysis promised by the Minister to support his contention that ASMS and the CTU were wrong when they said $555million would have been necessary just to stand still.
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