Dr Tim Parke, the clinical director of the adult emergency department at Auckland City Hospital, puts his concerns into an article in the Herald today. He writes that, in his opinion, the proposed use of public facilities for extra private procedures will produce a two tier system where, eventually, richer patients will have better medical [...]

This is the section on health from the 2025 Task Force summary:
10. Health:
a. A funder-provider model should be reintroduced in the hospital sector, allowing much greater private sector involvement in the provision of taxpayer-funded services.
b. Universal (unrelated to income or health status) subsidies for doctors’ visits should be abolished.
c. Subsidies for prescription pharmaceuticals should be substantially reduced, with [...]

Brian Fallow provides an excellent look at the urgent need for cost containment in health and the problems this involves. He points out that rising health costs is a far bigger potential problem than superannuation. It is also far more difficult to solve as a simple shift in age eligibility would sort out most superannuation [...]

One of the chief problems of a public health system is the knowledge that, no matter how bad things get financially, the government is always obliged to bail you out. Unlike a normal company, poor management will not bring the whole thing crashing down around your ears. It is argued that this is the essential reason behind [...]

Forget John Key and the H-fee. Don’t both with Winston’s Helicopter antics. The real dirty little secret of the election campaign is that people are suffering and even dying every day because of government ideology. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the comment of David “I’m in Charge” Cunliffe on the news that 10% of [...]