Never Enough

It is a truism that Health is a giant black hole that swallows government funding and always wants more. National have added an extra $3 billion dollars to the overall health budget and yet everyone is talking as if they had stripped health to the bone and closed half the hospitals.

The Dominion Post puts out the headline “Health: $3b boost and the spectre of cuts“ . Apparently, the fact that there will not be another massive boost in funding next year is the “spectre of cuts”. What a load of complete tosh. There is plenty of pork floating around in the health system – pork that does not contribute to the health of the community. This includes dozens of low-value “community projects” and thousands of man-hours wasted on reports, appraisals and quality assurance. As these are terminated, there will be money freed up for frontline services such as ED and elective surgery. The reaction of most of us working at said frontline will be “thank goodness that’s gone”. Not exactly a “spectre”.

But the Dom Post’s silliness is not only in the headline:

“The Budget was delivered a day after Wellington Hospital went into “code red”, with gridlocked wards and an overloaded emergency department forcing cancellation of four elective operations.”

And this has what to do with the budget?  This happens every single winter and is the result of a hospital that is too small. This is precisely why there is an extra $245 million for infrastructure upgrades of which Wellington and North Shore are the most desperate (and North Shore’s extension is almost complete). It has nothing at all to do with the amount of money spent on hospital services and it will take years to sort out. 

The Herald is just as guilty as the Dom Post. It’s headline “Budget 09: Backtrack on long-term health spending” absurdly overemphasises that National (due to fiscal constraint) is reducing the increase in health spending by a mere $50 million (out of a budget of nearly $13 billion) this year and by $100 million next year. They are not reducing the budget, merely reducing the amount of increase in the budget. Labour’s original projected budget for this year was $800 million more and $850 million more in 2010 – National is keeping this at $750 million each year (Exactly the same as labour’s revised budget). The Dom Post says “Documents show there will be no increase next year, and funding will decrease after that” – this is abject nonsense.

But it is not simply the newspapers that are manufacturing negatives where there are none. Ian Powell of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists says:

“it was predictable that National would quit its Vote Health pre-commitments, but the health system was already struggling and the recession would increase demand for health services.

““It’s a short-term response that is likely to have predictable longer-term negative consequences in terms of the ability to provide better, sooner, more convenient health care.””

This is despite the fact National has committed itself to two out of the three year funding line from Labour’s revised budget. And it is extremely unlikely that National will slash the health budget in the 2011 election year.

But the prize of Prime Negatroid goes to Ruth Dyson who is complaining that $100 million is being removed from the health budget to pay for home insulation. This apparently will be a disaster “long-term”. I assume this means that she does not believe that home insulation will have any long term health benefits.

I suspect it is fairly dumb politics to criticise National for doing something universally well-regarded by the public (home insulation).

Not to worry, Ruth. Labour is welcomed to stay in opposition for as long as they want.

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