Now National come for Health

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Ministry of Health forces managers to sign statements on DHB proposals
Senior managers at the Ministry of Health have been forced to sign statements swearing they did not leak controversial proposals to take powers away from elected district health boards.

Labour has described dissatisfaction levels at the ministry as “unprecedented”, following news of the signed statements.

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman was forced in July to allay fears the Government was planning to overhaul the entire governance and funding structures of DHBs, after two sections of a high-level report were leaked detailing major proposals for change.

Radio NZ said a number of staff working on the two documents that were leaked to the station were told to put in writing a confirmation that they had “acted appropriately” in ensuring the security of the documents while working on them.

Work on the health strategy and changes to DHBs has now been taken away from senior managers and given to external consultants from overseas, the station reported.

…and then they came for Health.

National probably can’t believe their luck at privatisation in Education, Prisons, Housing and Welfare. Health is the next sacred public cow to slaughter and the moves to rob the democratically elected representatives are similar to what National did to Environment Canterbury. To ensure no more is revealed National have moved the knife work offshore to consultants.

The problem with Health is that it is something many NZers use. Middle NZ can accept privatisation in state housing, prisons, poor schools and welfare because they impact people poorer than them, but health is a service they use and privatisation here has to be super secret so the first thing needed is to remove any elected officials who might spook the horses before the changes are made.

National will have its work cut out to privatise in Health because Jonathan Coleman is very lazy and sounds like a frog these days where as Annette King is a pocket battleship.

Tony Ryall was smart enough to never allow Health to be an issue in the headlines, Coleman doesn’t have any of those smarts and King is one of Labour’s best MPs. This privatisation will be National’s most difficult.

 

17 COMMENTS

  1. Privatising our health system is a no brainer when it comes to Bill English and co. He can well remember Simon Uptons foray into this area in the early 90’s and must lust after trying it again.

    Can you imagine the amount of money a few individuals can make from privatising or semi privatising health?

    What will there be, some “Mum and Dad” share offers in the local heath board or some kind of Serco stepping in running them. Or even some percentage coverage guarantee from the public health system like 80% but you pay the first 20% aka the current health insurance rorts. I mean if we get screwed on pharmaceuticals with the TPPA then where are National going to find the money?

    Sell that shitty putrid dead rat National, even your best liars (and there are plenty) will struggle with this one!

  2. The Bolger-Richardson-Shipley govt attempted a version of this in the 1990s, and it was UGLY, and was soundly rejected by the public, who refused to pay the infamous part-charges for hospital consultations. I saw it close-up, as I worked in Wellington Hospital at the time, and I watched it unfold, and it was a disaster.

    They also attempted to outsource some services, eg. IT, and that was a total fiasco and the contract was terminated early. I was personally involved in that.

    But, Tories never learn from their mistakes, and the ideological agenda juggernaught rumbles on regardless.

  3. It’s not that middle class people use hospitals, it’s that the baby boomers are the ones using the health system and the power of ballot box is held by the baby boomers – both because of their population size and because they vote.

    There is a lot of satisfaction about the way people are personally treated in hospital nowadays even though we hear about things going wrong in medical treatment in the news. I don’t think the baby boomers are going to like their doctors and their specialists getting done over.

    • You are so right, come 65 years of age and health insurance sky rockets out of the reach of people on fixed incomes. There will be hell to pay at the ballot boxes if they try to privatise health, the waiting time now is bad enough and the hospitals do the best they can. I can’t see it happening with this government as it is so poll driven.

  4. Just pointing out that the image caption has three typos:
    “Homelesness”. needs an extra s (Homelessness).
    “Powerlesness”. needs an extra s (Powerlessness)
    “Suicial”. needs a d (Suicidal).

    • Yay! I’m not the only nit-picking grammar-nazi on this blog!

      I do find it frustratingly difficult to read some of the posts here because of bad spelling and grammar but if we’re going to create memes (?) we need to be especially careful.

      And yes, we’re off topic… 🙂

  5. All been tried before under Jim Bolger. Stripped the people of any rights, charged for xrays at a public hospital. Tried charging for a copy of the meeting agenda. Shame on you John Key. Resign now before you do any more harm.

    • Yep. Remember when you went to a public hospital (I mean Crown Health Enterprise) in the 90s what was the first thing you saw when you walked through the main entrance? – a sign reading “cashier”. Says a lot about the priorities.

  6. This may well be the issue that finally makes ‘middle New Zealand’ wake up to the creeping privatisation agenda of their government.

    At some time everybody gets sick and needs hospitalisation or a specialist’s attention. But with specialists (in my recent experience) an appointment costs $10 per minute. My last bill was $450 (for a 45-minute appointment) ; and with private health premiums rocketing, more and more of ‘middle New Zealanders’ will be asking, quite reasonably, for a universally-available, immediate quality health service for which they pay their taxes.

    But the way the government is heading such a health ‘service’, already diminishing fast, will not be available for anyone but the top ten percent who can easily afford private hospital treatment.

    So this really is a ‘wake-up call’ for the other 90 percent of us!

  7. Just think about what they’ve been saying the last 10-14 days: “We may have to swallow a few dead rats to get the deal we want for dairy.” Gee, would Pharmac taking a few king size hits possibly be one of those dead rats?

    Once the prices start going up, cue reports of “under-performance” followed by cost-cutting to “balance the under-performance” followed by calls to privatise health via changes to ACC, Pharmac, and pushes for private health insurance. The playbook has become so predictable, it’s embarrassing.

    • Well, despite my concerns, and despite my disappointment that the TPPA has been signed, reports are saying that Pharmac has not been affected. I hope this turns out to be true.

  8. You could have added something like:
    Have we got the cure for you!
    Take one of these small b..s pills every night my little hobbits and you will wake up refreshed in the morning with no memory of the worries that you went to bed with last night.
    Just to keep you from worrying yourself sick we also have flags, all blacks, world cups and pandas.
    What a caring government, why should anyone want anyone else???

  9. Health service is the canary in the coalmine for a developed society, people made sacrifices to create this for good reason, they know what happens we don’t have one.
    Destroying the health service by starving it of oxygen and then say it’s not working, and …….. (wait for it…)private industry can do it better!!!!! massage the stats better and create a slave trade of workers more like.
    http://youtu.be/CsmIfDNeKLY

  10. I disagree, they have already privatised 95% of mental health services and got away with it. ACC use all private providers to deal with the thousands of abuse victims every year – which of course is why so many are harming their children, self-harming and committing suicide.

    Privatising mental health was easy of course because none of us being persecuted under the current system have any credibility. I was told by the Human Rights Tribunal all my complaints of discrimination and abuse were not valid because I had a personality disorder.

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