If the C19th author Charles Dickens were alive today he’d have much to write about, because the old wealthy and the new wealthy have managed to recapture our economy and take us back to those dark times before the social welfare system was created.
I was reminded of how much we have slipped back to the days when we thought there are deserving and undeserving people in our society measured by your wealth) when I recently came across this interview I recorded 4 years ago with Philip Bagshaw- a General Surgeon who was instrumental in setting up a Charity Hospital in Christchurch.
Just have a think about those two words “Charity Hospital ” for a moment.
What the hell’s gone wrong with our public health system where people now have to rely on a Charity Hospital to relieve their suffering?
If you want to get a chilling glimpse into our hospital system check out this 2 minute clip.
Please share with your whanau and friends because our health system is excluding too many of us from operations, procedures and new medicines simply because we do not have private medical cover or the means to pay for it.
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
However, unlike Victorian England, we have more food per capita than ever before and obesity (=gluttony) is more of a problem than hunger.
the poor cant afford food and rent
Fred Hollows people mentioned to me that the organisation had offered the government (National) to clear the backlog and large waiting list for cataract ops but had been turned down. Many just pay up rather than wait and wait while daily their sight deteriorates, a frightening experience, I paid $5000 for one eye the other was done on the public system. You have to wait until your sight is really bad and then it’s urgent. What if you can’t pay? It’s an op that only takes 20 minutes. I developed a ” secondary cataract”( bacteria behind the lens) behind the lens in the left eye some two years later. Rather than wait and wait and wait I paid $700 for yag laser treatment to clear it, took only 10 minutes. Truth is these treatments are rationed and it’s profoundly dispiriting and depressing.
It be so easy to get on top of it all and stay on top. People would then feel like people instead of poor supplicants.
You get user pays now? Its a fool who votes for his own destruction
“Its a fool who votes for his own destruction”
Seemingly, there is a lot of it about.
Except we haven’t be aggressively cutting public health spending as you suggest
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/102941246/do-we-put-enough-money-into-the-health-system
My understanding is the National Government didn’t increase funding for health commensurate with increasing population. This from Annette King. deliberate funding shortfalls. Usual National dirty tricks.
Health cuts show Government ‘squeezing too hard’ – Labour
Health funding has been slashed by $1.7 billion in the last five years, according to data commissioned by Labour.
Opposition health spokeswoman Annette King said the figures showed the Government was “squeezing too hard and investing too little”.
The release of the figures follow leaked documents revealing proposals for wholesale changes to the governance and funding of district health boards.
Labour’s Infometrics report shows health funding has been cut in four of the last six Budgets.
A shortfall of $500 million this year took the total funding slash to $1.7b since 2010.
The party asked Infometrics to use public sources to estimate the change in Core Crown health expenditure since the 2009-10 financial year and marry that up with inflation and demographic characteristics.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/70631965/null
Our ‘system’ was designed for a much smaller population and one in which there was a lot less persistent unemployment.
It was also one with more emphasis on health rather than ‘fixing sickness and disability.’ A bit more community intervention -usually by women as District nurses.
Once upon a time women had few work options available. Nursing of some kind was a respectable option. Dental nurses. Karitane nurses. Plunket nurses… Women who left school at 14 could go into nursing and train on the job.
That’s no longer an option – but the system still acts as if that’s the employment environment. Before the 1960s.
There were also waiting lists – and rationing, usually for the working class – regardless of ethnicity.
Those who can pay, do. Those who can’t, suffer.
The system is geriatric, riddled with anachronisms and attitudes at odds with IT and better equipment.
A big Augean stables waiting for someone to put the river through it and reset the entire system from training, to the way services are provided in a long skinny country with awkward roading.
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