No new ICU beds? W-H-A-T?!?!? Neoliberal dogma as social policy has failed us? Who woulda thunk it???

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That smug look of 'I told you so' from a medical expert who has been warning this very problem was coming 

Covid-19 NZ: Are ICUs really in better shape than they were pre-pandemic?

Aotearoa enjoyed more than 470 days without a level 4 lockdown. Did the Government use that time well or did it squander it? As the country endures ongoing restrictions, Stuff examines how well the Government prepared for the rising tide of Covid-19.

Last Thursday – two days after a community Covid-19 case catapulted the country into its second nationwide level 4 lockdown – Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, was asked if intensive care units could cope with the Delta outbreak.

“We don’t have any concerns at the moment, but since the outbreak last year, our ICUs have had readiness plans,” he replied.

But, since March last year, has New Zealand’s baseline specialist workforce and woefully low ICU bed capacity – among the lowest per person in the developed world – actually increased? The short answer is, well, no, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

Let me see if I can get this completely fucking straight – despite almost 500 days to prepare and hundreds of millions pumped into our health sector we still have fuck all ICU beds than when we entered this Covid emergency???

And why do we have this perpetual shortage of important state sector workers?

Because we allowed neoliberal dogma to molest and corrupt social policy.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Here’s what SHOULD happen.

ALL drs, nurses and teachers should be offered free education and living costs to train AND THEN they are bonded to NZ for 5 years and have to work in NZ in that job to pay back that free education and living allowances.

Instead we charge these people full costs if education so that the first thing they do is go overseas to pay off their debt.

It’s fucking outrageous that we face staffing shortages at the height of a national emergency because neoliberal dogma replaced sensible social policy.

No political party is taking this seriously.

I just wanted to point out how we’ve all allowed this clusterfuck to manifest so I can laugh when the shit hits the fan.

At some stage we have to restructure social policy so it helps the needs of society not the personal greed of the individual, at some stage we need to rebuild our values for the many not the few!

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87 COMMENTS

  1. Not sure it’s neoliberalism but it certainly is gross incompetence.
    Manifest throughout the government and any branch of the public service you care to name.
    No one appears to be in charge or accountable.
    It is criminal negligence not to have used the year and a half bought by everyone else’s lockdown sacrifices, to prepare for Covid.

    Worst government in New Zealand history.

    • The destruction of our health system had its origin under Helen Clark with a man called Harold Titter. And yes it had everything to do with neo liberalism.

      • “The destruction of our health system had its origin under Helen Clark”. Short memories aren’t useful tools when it comes to historical timelines… The process was actually already underway during the Muldoon era, then Roger Douglas got his way on beginning the process of privatising as much of our public infrastructure, and services as they could.. This was compounded under the leadership of Jim Bolger, by Ruth Richardson to the point where, for example, someone on a benefit who needed a tooth pulled because of excruciating pain would be given an appointment months away from when they contacted the emergency dental service.. I have to assume you were either not alive yet at that stage, or insensate to your surroundings… Or is this just the wishful thinking of a closet tory? Clarkes “failure” was not fixing everything in record time… This had as much to do with the intransigence of the bureaucrats as anything else.. A problem that has become acute after nearly a decade of NZ’s infrastructure being given the “scorched earth” treatment by a decidedly corrupt and illegitimate government, led by a soulless traitor… “timelines” is a good word to remember if one wishes to be relevant…

  2. Having a crack at neoliberalism and students loans is just a distraction.
    The real failure is the sloth and incompetence of the MOH, and the failure of Ministers to demand better from it.

    • Agree. Even before neo-liberalism, the Health Dept was the bastion of second -rate medicos who couldn’t hack it out in the real world, plus the odd Pom thinking himself or herself God’s gift to the colonials. The working model is its own problem.

      • Our health system is significantly worse off under the ‘new and improved’ neo liberal brand as NZ’s health and education were recognized as one of the best prior to Douglas’s treasons. We had problems before that, but nothing quite like the ongoing systematic and financial ‘lack’ we have seen over decades since Helen Clarks govt and Harold Titter. There has been no improvement.

    • Ada – It is the Ministry of Health, which needs to smarten up. Neo-liberalism made its comfortable sort of mediocrity worsen, and citing neoliberalism is far from being a distraction as you suggest. It was bad social engineering implemented to widen the gulf between the haves and the have- nots, and it has done so.

  3. Neoliberalisn has no loyalty to any nation and sees the entire world as a place to be looted, polluted and exploited….to the point of exhaustion and collapse.

    So after nearly 40 years of Neoliberalism that followed idiotic ‘Think Big’, that is exactly what we are witnessing: exhaustion and collapse.

    But don’t expect any nation caught up in the so-called Washington consensus accompanied by the bizarre Chicago economic theories to retreat from that which fails the populace continually. Governments see in place to ensure that the loot and pollute and exploit system continues until everything is rendered inoperable and the world is rendered unihabitable.

    And don’t expect the dumbed-down masses to do anything to protect themselves from the consequences of operating this utterly dysfunctional system.

    Obey. Comply. Because it’s ‘official’.

  4. “All Drs, Nurses, and Teachers should be offered free education…….” AMEN to that; just like it used to be!
    Remember nurses homes and teacher training colleges? and while I am at it companies who invested in training apprentices and cadets?
    Then came the need to make everyone take on debt….and we end up with the mess we have now.
    Martyn, your solution is excellent; if Labour do just that they will secure my vote forever!

    • Just quietly, nothing is free in this world. If we want to fund education what are we willing to go without?

      I’m all in favour of paying for our best and brightest to become engineers, scientists, doctors and what have you as to not make the future smarter has never seemed like a good idea however what do we trade off in place of this?

      Here’s a heretical idea – let’s dig up those billions of tonnes of coal we live above and sell it rather than buying all that dirty coal from Indonesia. We can manage our national carbon commitments through the ETS and at the same time create a sovereign wealth fund that would be the envy of the world with benefits such as being able to pay for a world class healthcare system, education for our people and whilst we’re at it, a welfare system that isn’t so punitive as the one we have.

      We won’t though, seemingly we’d rather have a second world health system, a predatory tertiary education system and our poorest condemned to live hard and miserable lives in poverty.

      • Yeti. Dig up that coal and sell it ? Why we should sell our coal when we can give it away free to China just like we did and are doing with our water, defies reason.

        Good ideas though – and their time will come.

        • Auckland Council pay 29 million of rates to foreign companies to NOT recycle (5% can hardly be called recycling) https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-councillors-approve-29m-bailout-for-multinational-recycling-company/SIVORNBDHSZWQZQA6E6HFS7A3A/

          Companies are doing great guns with expanding waste here when their recycling company seems to be failing dismally, aka expanding into Dome Valley. https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/300333971/auckland-iwi-will-appeal-dome-valley-dump-decision

          Unusual and bad things seem to happen around these global businesses. But it is NEVER businesses fault. NZ neoliberals love them so much!

          “NZ” Wastemanagement

          Carla Neems, 6, never got to tell her mum and dad she was the class ‘kid of the day’
          https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/112696703/inquest-hears-that-sensor-may-have-saved-girl-killed-by-rubbish-truck

          Visy

          “In December 2005 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) commenced prosecution against Visy for alleged involvement in a cartel in the packaging industry. In 2007, Richard Pratt and the Visy group received a A$36 million fine for price fixing, representing the largest fine in Australian history at the time. Richard Pratt and several of his senior executives admitted to wrong-doing in the case. The Justice presiding, Peter Heeley, described them as “the worst cartel to come before the courts in 30-plus years”.[19][20]

          In 2016 the Australian Taxation Office revealed that in 2013–14, despite earning more than $2.5 billion in revenue, the holding company Pratt Consolidated Holdings had paid no tax. Further, that Thorney Investments, operated by Richard Pratt’s son-in-law Alex Waislitz, which earned $430 million in revenue, had also paid no tax.[21]

          Hells Angels links[edit]
          Visy Industries has links with the outlaw motorcycle group, the Hells Angels. Visy Industries employs a trucking company run by Stephen James Rogers, a convicted drug trafficker and founding chapter boss of the Hells Angels. Rogers was sentenced in 2007 to three years’ prison for drug trafficking, and a senior Visy Industries manager gave character evidence for Rogers at his trial and stated the company would stand by him despite his conviction for trafficking amphetamines.[22] In 2012, Visy Industries was accused of using the Hells Angels to collect their debts. Police and industry sources state Visy founder Richard Pratt, who died in 2009, personally approved the deal with the Hells Angles after the state government removed the need for debt collectors to be licenced.[23] Visy Industries have called the accusations “nonsense”.[24]”
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visy_Industries

          Body of newborn baby found at Auckland recycling facility in Onehunga, police fear for mother
          https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/body-of-newborn-baby-found-at-auckland-recycling-facility-in-onehunga-police-fear-for-mother/BCRNFQR2WKFV2YDTXRE3CE52B4/

      • How about closing all the many many tax loop holes that allow the rich to basically pay no tax. That would well and truly cover the cost and LOTS LOTS more, to say, feed kids at school, way way better hospital care/facilities etc etc etc.
        Print our own currency and NOT allow the uber-rich to do so, which is the present setting. No wonder they look successful, I reckon 90+% of Kiwis would do well if they could LEGALLY create money out of thin air.

      • Yeti, I agree nothing is free in this world and I have often wondered where the funds that invested in our future have dissppeared to; the loss of the State Advances funding for housing that provided many of us with our first homes is another failure worthy of review; maybe that’s a thesis topic for someone. But like saveNZ says it used to work; we all seemed to be busy with little unemployment and no shortage of skilled staff.

        • …’But like saveNZ says it used to work; we all seemed to be busy with little unemployment and no shortage of skilled staff’…

          ————–

          Indeed we did. And like every critical infrastructure such as rail, power, water and our other utility’s they were all sold off to the lowest bidder ( usually foreigners) with the mantra of ‘efficiency, more competition leading to more choice and lower prices’.

          The exact opposite has happened , we pay more for the overall costs of living, are plagued with unemployment, and, – like the recent power outages, have shitty, unaccountable third world service with these private companies spending little on maintenance.

          TINA but to return to our original Keynesian based settings and renationalize to get things done.

      • Yeti…MTB rider?
        All you say makes total sense. The coal idea is a no brainer. But it’s all wasted. Save it for another govt, because this one simply cannot do it. Career bureaucrats that are too inexperienced at business. Unless it involves fancy slogans, like Shovel Ready, they’re excellent at that. But not one of these ministers, including Jacinda, can either plan, or project manage and then shit kick to get it done – without excuses. That’s what the job entails. Ministers should be good project managers. Nothing else. None of them are. I wish voters would see that. But don’t worry, kindness will get us to the top of OECD.

  5. Agreed. Plus stop this stupid approach to work visas for medics.
    If you are a medic here waiting for residency approval.
    APPROVE IT TODAY
    Come of Far Foy. Earn your salary.

    AND, recruit another thousand nurses from places like the Phillipines.
    OK, call them Nurse Aids while they work and check off the boxes.
    Stuff the Nurse and Doctor Unions who thro up barriers.

    • Don’t be low IQ. There isn’t a country on planet earth that can spare nurses. Make your fucken own stupid NZ.

      • I disagree, NZ is considered a great place to ‘escape’ to. Brits, American and especially S.E Asians WANT to be here, so it makes eminent sense, IF DONE CORRECTLY, which is hasn’t for the 21 years I’ve been following it.
        A female friend, Pilipino nurse, gets residency because she’s a nurse, but can’t be a nurse (in NZ) as they don’t recognize her qualification. PLUS would have to pay to do the WHOLE nursing course, there is no ‘conversion course’. HOW DUMB IS THAT !!!!
        That may be the only reason NOT t do that GREAT idea of Ra Henare

        • Except to is the operative word. Not work and prosper in NZ!

          When Covid is over we will another 1 million foreign escapee’s, who leave NZ to prosper, while being able to come back and claim benefits and citizenship to their family. Of course the family house is left in NZ.

          • Typo. Except should be escape!

            AKA NZ is attracting foreign nationals who want to escape! Not work and prosper in NZ. All the visas are temporary aka they get someone to ‘invest’ money. But then they take it out again, and often what they invested in, is a disaster, aka run down vineyards, Waiwera, etc Then they get citizenship and a huge capital gain in most cases! Win for escapees, bad for local community and increasing house/land prices.

      • The story in the Listener about immegrantion is that Germany is going to countries like the Philippines and setting up training schools . Once trained 50 percent stay and 50 percent go to Germany for 5 yes . This is a win win as the Philippines get nurses at home and those away send money home . Norway are doing the same with seafarers. We need to have this type of inovative thinking.

        • Germany has a population of 85 million, NZ has 5 million, sadly neoliberism and the NZ neoliberal education system has failed if you can’t even train enough doctors and nurses for 5 million people!

          NZ doesn’t have so much a issue attracting workers, it has a big issue retaining workers, because our working conditions are unfair and our wages are out of line with the cost of living and prospering here.

          The only way to correct the NZ retention issue, is to increase wages and conditions.

    • Sorry I’d prefer to be looked after by a qualified nurse or doctor not a cheaper neoliberal work-a-round.

      Shock doctrine system is in full swing, where neoliberals run down the system to the point of failure, to push through poorer quality conditions for patients and staff.

      Again I value my parents, children to be looked after by qualified workers, not the cheapest person the organisation can find.

      Like the construction industry where somehow anybody can come to NZ to work construction, and not be qualified and now flooded with cash workers who don’t know what they are doing and supervised by directors who cut corners. Really working for us! NOT! Even the engineers are hopeless these days with consents going through while not actually being viable! AKA Skypath.

    • Yes but ONLY qualified Doctors and Nurses who are actually checked and supervised for their first few years! Not support workers everywhere! Constant dumbing down is everywhere in NZ. Does not save money, it’s adding more people into the country who need health care themselves!

      • Indeed, like so many skilled workers, they all left after the Employment Contracts Act 1991 was brought in. Many over the ditch, never to return. A while back there were 650,000 more of less permanent ex pats in Australia.

        This of course was quite convenient for the neo liberals because they could then import workers from overseas, – many from non unionized country’s who were happy to work for peanuts.

        The catch phrase then was the ‘ brain drain’ that they used, – a problem they themselves created largely to bring down wages and increase their profits.

    • APPROVE IT TODAY

      Yes. (Kris Faafoi.. sometimes seems a bit out of his depth. Maybe too many portfolios or something.)

  6. Don’t always agree with a lot of stuff you say but certainly you hit the nail on the head with free training and living costs for doctors nurses and teachers and bonding them back to NZ/AO for five years . I would go a step further and add Occupational therapists mental health professionals and the trades

  7. We would be a lot better off with Martyn running the country . . I am not sure if they were born that way or become retarded over time (yes Woke Brigade I just wrote retarted) but politicians are simply just fucking useless.

    • It’ll be all about the ‘control files’ that exist about the politicians, created by the spooks who are supposed to be looking after our interests NOT theirs own and their USA (???) pay masters.

  8. This article nails it . The power is in the hands of a group driven by a dogma that they know best .. If only it could be replaced with common sense and care we would have a better country. Both sides of the political divide are blighted with this drive and the public servants play them little a fiddle feeding their egos and doing what suits them and usually that is at odds with what works for most.

    • Sadly Trevor there aren’t many here with common sense. Common sense is not a gift, it’s a punishment. Because you have to deal with everyone who doesn’t have it. Judging by many comments on Covid we are punished a lot on here.

  9. If it’s neoliberalism that’s at fault, why then is it that the US has the most ICU beds per head of population?

    Our situation would appear to be more likely that it is the result of having socialised health care that by default has to ration and limit resource use and investment. This combined with piss poor management and leadership from the MoH be the government red or blue has led us here.

    Put simply, NZ can’t afford a 1st world healthcare system as we don’t generate the income as a nation to pay for it and what money we do have gets frittered away on things we shouldn’t really have – consider the push bike bridge ahead of paying nurses as an example.

    Our current government neither have the wisdom or experience to manage a church fete. They have borrowed billions and where has it gone? I doubt that any Kiwi would object had they poured that money into building capacity in the health system. We could have gone out to the world and hired entire teams of ICU specialists, nurses and doctors with those billions. Instead it went where and for what?

    It isn’t neoliberalism that’s at fault, it’s a failure of leadership and an absence of ambition for our country and it’s people.

    • It may have more ICU beds but don’t book one unless you have insurance.
      I remember a wise older friend telling me when medical insurance became all the rage in NZ (1970’s) that this would be the start of Harley St Specialists in NZ, along with their fees, and lead to the running down of the public health system.
      So now it has happened and few can afford the insurance premiums – no surprises there!
      I only wish my wise old friend was alive so I could say “you told us so”.

    • It is neoliberalism that’s at fault, and it’s a failure of leadership and an absence of ambition for our country and it’s people.

      ————

      Just made a few small adjustments to make it read correctly.

  10. Jacinda was elected on Covid. Because she knows her political career depends on it, she has been extra cautious. Waiting for the best vaccine and keeping the country locked up during outbreaks until any risk of further spread has gone. Problem with that plan has been even though appearing methodical, wanting to get things right, she didn’t count on her Governments inability to put their plan into action in a timely way. She would have got away with it had it not been for delta. With lots of luck she may get on top of this outbreak but the lack of planning ahead is showing through with our lack of everything, including acute beds and vaccine. She thought we could drift along and get everyone vaccinated by feb next year. She already has our largest city locked down and producing nothing with billions of dollars being spent, but it’s unforgivable to think this could keep happening until we reach 80% double vaccinated. Not just booked in and living with the chance that a shortage of vaccine keeps us vulnerable. Jacinda has a “good Will “ following that will quickly shrink if we continue to get bad news.

  11. At some stage we have to restructure social policy so it helps the needs of society not the personal greed of the individual, at some stage we need to rebuild our values for the many not the few!

    So basic.
    So essential.

  12. I am against paying for tertiary education, because in the past most Kiwis would do an OE and then come back to NZ to work, so it always benefited society. We didn’t lose millions of people in brain drains before neoliberal dogma has taken over.

    Now we have the worst of all worlds where we have low wage workers and non income people coming into NZ to ‘study’, or buy their way in, can bring their family/employees here for years, buy property as though they are a Kiwi citizen, get or create ghost and low paid, low skilled jobs, and then never leave while wages stagnate in real terms.

    NZ has a huge amount of low income, high needs, high welfare people while the brain drain intensifies.

    Our wages are much lower than OZ, which means more experienced people’s wages don’t increase as exploiter employers are overwhelming NZ. Better workers are incentivised to leave NZ for better wages and conditions. Those workers are traditionally replaced by foreign students/workers/family members and our bovine system, doesn’t work, because now the hospitals don’t have doctors and nurses they have somehow been replaced by less qualified ‘health workers, support workers, support staff, management and many other layers.

    For example we might lose an experienced nurse trained in NZ, but replacing them with say a nursing support worker, 3 children and a spouse. So the skills shortages have been intensifying for years.

    Our system is woke crazy. A migrant doctor doesn’t get any priority for visas, because the woke think that an exploitative petrol manager, drug smuggler or potential terrorist, is just as important to stay here for compassionate reasons! In addition the loophole has people getting Permanent residency or citizenship in NZ for their family, more high needs people flood in, while the original worker can just leave NZ then come back and forth as they want, retire and use the NZ health, ACC and welfare system!

    Skilled Kiwis come back, but they can’t find work or are under utilised, as the NZ workplace mentality is toxic, with a do nothing culture, until they get their cheap, no competition worker back. Thus productivity keeps falling here.

    • saveNZ dead right it is.
      This top down $ before people model of healthcare has completely failed nz and the demolition of the CDHB by the neoliberal bureaucrats over a health specialists advise DHB board says exactly what I fear most of this new Health NZ authority will turn out to be more of the same $ cost minded bureaucrat bullshit.
      The middle class and the swinging center voter allowed this to happen .

    • Yes – essential reading, and his reports on Christchurch hospital and Canterbury DHB were sobering preparation for the details regarding Lester Levy’s oleaginous advent. On top of that, the Powell reports give a fascinating case study and example of Voltaire’s bastards at work (bureaucracy only seems to play when human resources are available). John Ralston Saul published ‘Voltaire’s Bastards – the tyranny of Reason in the West’ (the subtitle’s ‘tyranny’ was changed to ‘dictatorship’ in subsequent editions; less blunt, therefore blander? bureaucracies prefer polysyllables, business-speak is simpler to generate without thinking) in the early 1990s. I read it a few years later and have lent it, given it and referred to it depressingly often since.

  13. It should be 10 years of bonding, but people are allowed to take 2 years off to travel within that time.

    But still wages and conditions need to rise. NZ should be competing with OZ in terms of wages, but is that is falling.

    Also shortage of psychologists and qualified mental health and social workers.

    (Apparently there has been a flurry of social workers being trained in NZ, but again social workers and any workers are only as good as their course of study, and courses in NZ, seem to being downgraded with rampant cheating and lecturers being expected to pass everyone for the cash).

  14. Neoliberalism is just not working around the world.

    Look at the disaster of the withdrawal from Afghanistan that makes Biden and the US (and to a lesser extent) allies look like fools, as the medieval men defeat them and democracy in a few days.

    I’m pretty sure that Biden was not told of the likelihood of the Taliban getting to Kabul in days, or that the US were going to leave weapons and sensitive data behind, the new Afghan government was purposely kept as weak, stupid puppets and scant details in reports on what is the likely outcome for a significant amount of Afghans who were against the Taliban.

    yep, when you have turned your US military into profit driven shareholders, their object is to make money, not long-lasting peace or any security (that is not as profitable!), while telling lovely marketing stories to the customers (government) which now appear to be a fiction to reality!

    • BINGO !, also, methinks Afghanistan is a buffer against the Russians, and deals have been made on the sly. What was that CIA guy doing holding talks with the Taliban for ???

      • Neoliberalism is the biggest security threat in the world!

        Sorry not interested in expansion of totalitarianism, where people are arrested for disagreeing, organs harvested, huge corruption, on the backs of lucrative drugs trades!

        Expanding greed and corruption into the West with neoliberalism, not paying billions in corporate taxes and having corporations literally gobbling up government money, while providing terrible results (in the US cyclone Katrina, Afghanistan) while citizens who pay taxes can’t get healthcare, decent schooling and housing is wrong! Happening all over the west!

        There is something far more important to the west than money, and that is having the willing support and help of it’s people while being able to listen and act on their concerns – not have it railroad by business profit interests and woke propaganda who are very self serving and now taking over elections!

  15. It’s simply an inept Government out of its depth.
    This has been the case for over 4 years now.
    NZ elections have become popularity contests which is terrifying.

    • Cant just blame this Govt this bullshit started under national in 1996.
      it is every damn Govt fault since then because Middle nz didn’t give a damn about our healthcare with our she’ll be right Jack I am ok screw anyone else attitude.
      Now it has come right back round and biting them fair square in the butt.
      I have been saying on TDB since it started and on Facebook since 2012 we have a 3rd world health system.

    • John, Once again your bias appears with claiming this problem is only 4 years in the making. This problem has been building since the 1970’s. Our 2 main political parties fight for the votes of middle NZ and in doing so have lost their passion for real reform – the electorate for its part just doesn’t seem to want to allow things to improve; I think because we no longer believe any of their promises. But also I think the bureaucracy and ‘big money’ have effectively stymied any government, short of a nationalising of many assets, from implementing any change that would interfere with their positions of power, privilege, and wealth.

      • Peter Kelly spot on .

        The number of times I have mentioned various healthcare issues invariably one of the responses I get is are you prepared to pay more tax followed by like hell am I going to pay more or the We don’t have enough money etc etc etc .
        Blindly Ignoring the fact all the money is being spent at the expensive end of the healthcare system because of failure to adequately fund the front end which is primary care and medicines .

    • John – “ NZ Elections have become popularity contests which is terrifying”. You bet it is terrifying when a useless dilettante like Key could get elected, and slobbered over by dopey media, and then quit saying that his biggest regret was that he didn’t manage to pull off a flag change. Small wonder that the Nats got the boot, even if Key is still lingering around trying to look important.

      Never forget that his government and it’s useless hangers-ons even denied that there was a housing crisis when they deliberately helped to cause it. And the way the Nats are whinging now because they can’t pop off globe trotting is a stark reminder of how much worse the covid scenarios would be if these self-absorbed hedonists hadn’t been replaced in the nick of time. Going by their track record, they’d probably be denying this too, or whimper away about conspiracy theorists, or some such.

  16. iCU beds lowest per capita in the developed world!!
    DHBs don’t know which staff are vaccinated!!
    Last in the OECD for vaccine rollout!!

    • Lowest rates of deaths.
      First in covid response until this outbreak, you never mentioned that John but as Peter said it’s just your bias rather than any rational thought.

      • Depends on how they judge ‘covid response’, doesn’t it?

        Fewest deaths per capita is one good way, preparing to live in a world with an endemic disease by vaccinating the population would also be a good way, which we haven’t done so well.

        • As does “last in the OECD” and “iCU beds lowest per capita in the developed world’ And can you define “haven’t done so well” from who’s perspective, yours?
          One thing we have done extremely well is not to listen to propoganda.

      • Bert did you see Tom Scotts carton today I can imaging it would have raised a smile and the remark so bloody true !

    • Thats what happens when you have a brain drain and replace your population with horticulture and liquor workers with “entrenprenuer” exploiter low wage sunset businesses like a fish and chip shop.

  17. Some figures to play with.
    The Government has signalled $62.1 billion of funding to support the COVID-19 response and recovery.
    According to the Canterbury DHB: The average daily cost of a patient in our ICU wards is $5,500
    Average Covid stay in ICU, 5-days (declining due to advanced treatment).
    Hospitalization appears to be required in about 4% of infected cases (also declining due to advanced treatment).

    • No need, stick to your comments and your lack of evidence and no swearing John it’s most unbecoming of you particularly the DHB and vaccinating comment. It’s best not to comment just for the sake of it on things you are hopelessly clueless on otherwise in your case you come across as a bit silly really.

  18. Peter,
    I accept your comments but point out Labour campaigned on being able to fix the issues which they haven’t and indeed most things have worsened.
    John

    • Agreed John, more failed promises. I was prepared to give Labour a ‘get out of jail free’ for the first term with Winston, surely enough to drive anyone bananas! Not sure what leeway to give them now whilst they are dealing with Covid; my real issue is National – it is in total melt down and not showing any signs of acknowledging the need for a total refresh so in my book they are not even worthy if consideration. Seymour’s utterings just prove he is a white priviledged fool, and the Green’s include some fairly radical ideas (but I am always impressed with Chloe Swarbrick).
      So it’s very much a case of watch this space for me!

  19. Anyone else remember Harold Titter?, – the guy who the neo liberals contracted to shred and dismantle our health system in the lie of ‘efficiency’ in order to privatize our health system? . Just one of a long line of bitch ‘consultants’ these treasonous neo liberals employed. And that was under Helen Clark. The same Helen Clark who got us involved in Afghanistan.

  20. For those that continually think we can ‘import’ in more doctors and nurses.

    Doesn’t work. The migrant doctors who are excellent, LEAVE! The entire system needs to be redesigned around retaining the best doctors and nurses, to give the best possible care to patients.

    AKA From 2014, still Government doesn’t understand the problem!!!! Importing in people doesn’t work because quality people don’t want to stay in a dysfunctional, unfair, situation! From Werewolf. http://werewolf.co.nz/2014/12/public-health-the-silent-crisis/

    “In mid-November, one such departure highlighted some of the issues behind the negative trends. Wellington Hospital lost its leading cardio-electrophysiologist, Dr Alejandro Jimenez Restrepo. Born in Colombia and trained in the US, Jimenez had arrived here in 2012 with his wife and young family, intending to settle permanently in New Zealand. Within two and a half years, he was gone. In late November, Werewolf contacted Jimenez at his new post in Abu Dhabi, to discuss the reasons for his departure.

    The service that Jimenez arrived to set up – basically, it would enable the effective diagnosis and treatment of serious electro-cardiac conditions – had been totally absent from Wellington Hospital for five years, since 2007. “It took a lot of effort in those two years [since 2012] to get the service re-established,” Jimenez told me, “and to make sure that when people referred the patients, that we were providing adequate care. Because its not about just getting the patients and doing the procedures ; its about getting results that were comparable to more established electro-physiology services..”

    Essentially, what Jimenez encountered at Capital & Coast DHB was a nominal commitment that chronically needed to be augmented by the inputs of un-compensated time and effort by him and his colleagues. “In my personal opinion I think the DHB was committed in word, but not in action. They said yes, we were supporting the service, we will support the service, but there wasn’t a financial support to provide the service with the needs to cope with the demands for the service. If you think of the electro-physiology service, you’re looking at a catchment area where the population of the central region is a million people. When I arrived in May 2012, there was not a single electro-physiologist between Hamilton and Christchurch.” Until earlier this year, one electro-cardial specialist [ie. Jimenez] was treating a catchment area of 1.1 million people.

    Pay was not the reason why Jimenez had come to New Zealand. “If I’d wanted to make $600,000 a year in private practice, I’d have stayed in the United States.” Instead, he’d wanted to work within public health amid the collegial work environment that this entailed. When he left, a job-sizing exercise within the cardiology department had been in train at Wellington Hospital for 18 months. “It measures how many hours per week you work, what sort of work you do, are you able to cope with the demands of the service, are you working more than you supposed to be working. How many hours beyond your contracted hours, and so on. By the time I left, we had still not gotten to an agreement. Some details remain confidential, but I can say that the cardiology department in general – including myself, but not just me – were working at about 150% of what was contracted. There was a 50% of extra workload that was not being recognised by the hospital in terms of remuneration, or in terms of acknowledging that extra workload.”

    That extra workload, he continues, was being carried out of necessity, to maintain the level of service required. “In other words, the patients demanded the care, they needed the care, and cardiology, as you know is a very critical area where you can’t deny patients access to certain services for certain procedures, even if its after-hours. So we were trying to get some recognition from the hospital with regards to the remuneration because we were all working above and beyond the contracted hours ..It was a very protracted negotiation and at some point it became very clear that they were not going to honour the extra work we were carrying on for a very long time. “

    Essentially, this lack of remuneration for the chronic overtime being worked went hand in hand with protracted delays in acquiring essential equipment – eg, a mapping system that measures and tracks how the heart’s electrical impulses are functioning was eventually acquired with the help of a third party. Cumulatively, the situation eroded the reasons that had attracted Jimenez to New Zealand in the first place.

    His case is merely indicative of the wider problem. As mentioned, the NZ system is becoming more dependent on foreign doctors and on foreign specialists whom it seems increasingly unable to attract, and retain. In his experience, is this retention problem mainly to do with pay levels, or with work conditions?

    “I think its both…” Compare the salaries of senior consultants in New Zealand, he says, with those in other countries – such as Australia – and the salaries are far inferior in New Zealand. His decision to come here, he repeats, was on other grounds. “You make it on the basis that you are going to get a balance between work and family life. But when you start working and you start seeing all these issues with patient workload, wait lists, and see that the ratio of physicians to cope with the patient demands is insufficient, you start working extra hours…”

    So how long do we think this family will last for in Invercargill, before being poached somewhere else? 2 years????
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/doctor-influencer-mama-doctor-jones-aka-danielle-jones-accepts-job-in-invercargill/LXZWKOOS4FBEQJWPYXT2OOQ4LU/

    If they trained a doctor from Invercargill who has family and ties there, much more likely to stay!!!

    But in our rush to privatise our tertiary education system, , it’s now up to who has the most money and resources in many cases with our rise of foreign focused education system in NZ, on who gets into NZ medical school!

  21. See references to common sense often on this site.
    We all know who said;
    “Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.”

    • John, I would disagree with it Einstein (if indeed it was him who said this). I would say ‘Bias is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.’
      Common sense is something that requires a level of wisdom which is rarely achieved by that age.

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