Dear Mr. Key Congratulations on winning the election. I know you are probably too busy right now to read blogs, but I also know that there is at least one National health staffer who reads MacDoctor Moments, so I thought I’d just get my oar in early and let you know my opinion. After all, [...]

One of the nice things about Shakespeare is that he’s dead. This means I can happily swipe his lines and be considered amusing instead of a plagiarist. Let’s hear it for expiry of copyright!  :-)  I am looking at the rest of Labour’s health policy – the stuff that can’t be matched directly to a National [...]

Having finished with the head-to-head comparisons, National has one part of it’s health policy left – it’s medicines policy. Pharmac is the government department that doctors love to hate. We scratch our heads over the ramblings of the Ministry of Health and complain bitterly about directives from our DHBs, but Pharmac are the people with [...]

Unlike National, Labour treats its ACC policy as a separate issue, rather than part of its health policy. However, their approaches are sufficiently similar to be able to compare. I note that some left wing blogs, notably the Standard, are saying that National wish to privatise ACC. This is incorrect. Labour will continue to maintain [...]

National do not have a stated policy for elderly health, but do have a discussion document (PDF). Labour’s policy can be found here. As there is nothing to attempt a head-to-head comparison on, I will instead compare Labour’s thinking with National’s on this subject. Labour will continue the progressive removal of asset testing for older [...]

A report from the Northern DHBs today reveals that most of the services supplied by Northern and the Auckland DHBs are under serious pressure, especially emergency and cancer care. This comes as no surprise to me. I have worked at a number of the hospitals represented in the report. I would also agree that the [...]

There is an interesting difference in emphasis in the policies on hospital services. Labour’s is again very broad-stroked with no costing and emphasizes ”A Strong and Safe Public Health System You Can Trust“. National’s is very focused on waiting lists and Hospice, although it does discuss other aspects of DHBs. The preambles of both documents are eerily similar, with [...]

Here is the head-to-head comparison between Labour’s Woman’s Health Policy and National’s Maternity Policy. National’s policy is not a comprehensive woman’s policy and concentrates solely on birthing. However Labour’s policy offers only some waffle on access to contraception (nothing new here) and talks about its HPV (Gardasil) vaccination program which I have already commented on [...]

Here is the head-to-head comparison between Labour’s Health Workforce Policy and National’s (PDF).  Labour’s policy starts off by patting itself on the back about the extra thousand doctors it has added to the workforce. I have already pointed out that this “growth” in doctors is less than the population growth and the number of doctors [...]

The Herald today has this cute little graphic claiming that National is now out-pledging Labour.  It was a relatively quiet campaign week in terms of spending promises, with Labour deciding to largely pull the plug on pledges other than infrastructure-related ones. This would have been nice if it was true. Unfortunately, all it really appears to [...]