It is an indictment of how far we have to go as a nation while watching how the addition of ethnicity in surgery waiting lists have been manufactured into an example of apartheid by the political right.
The addition of ethnicity as a factor in getting public surgeries is not reverse racism, it is a symptom of a public health system so dangerously underfunded that it has been forced to add ethnicity as a determinate in health dollars because the outcomes for Māori and Pacifica and people living in rural areas and those who are poor are so bad, they need extra help just getting into the waiting list.
We have dangerously underfunded public health for decades and these new determinants as to who gets surgery is a response to that.
Painting the addition of ethnicity to surgical wait lists as some type of ‘Māorification’ of public health is offensive and grotesquely stupid.
If we had a fully funded public health system with appropriate cultural outreach and community based services we wouldn’t need to add these determinants as to who gets surgery, which is a revelation in itself, but watching Māori health become a political football by ACT and National under the guise of fighting racism is an ugly fallacy that does a disservice to our political debate.
We learn everything about white privilege. European society and America was billed and white privilege. And white privilege is white supremacists. pic.twitter.com/0kw0URdHYx
— Don Salmon (@dijoni) June 21, 2023
First published on Waatea News.
“If we had a fully funded public health system with appropriate cultural outreach and community-based services we wouldn’t need to add these determinants as to who gets surgery” I agree t6otally – but that is still no excuse to march down the slippery slope of providing healthcare on the basis of race rather than need. Rural people have poorer outcomes than urban – should we give farmers preferential access to surgery? Woman live longer than men – should we get rid of woman’s health initiatives as being sexist? All New Zealanders should have equal opportunities to access public health – then whether they choose to take those opportunities is up to the individuals.
Jason – sweetheart – I’m going to try VERY hard not to shit on you here.
You do understand right THAT LIVING IN A RURAL AREA IS A FUCKING DETERMINANT IN RATIONALISING HEALTH DOLLARS right?
You say this ” Rural people have poorer outcomes than urban – should we give farmers preferential access to surgery?” and when you say it, it sounds like you are nt aware that rural people DO GET PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT that it is already one of the determinants.
You know this right Jason?
You know that the determinate of health rationalisation are: Rural, Pacifica, how long you have been on the waitlist, being poor or being Māori.
You know this right Jason? Yet you write things that suggest you don’t know it.
Remember OVERALL the clinical severity of the need is the determinant – these other factors are secondary to the actual health severity.
Jason Yeah you’ve fallen into the Seymour ACT party trap of concentrating on a particular race to claim special privileges but didn’t focus on the other determinants. Typical right winger troupe!!
To echo Martyn’s reply the ethnic determinate is variable but I believe it makes up about 2% of the overall weighting with the overwhelming priority being on clinical need. Other factors are location (rural), deprivation, time on waiting list.
I’m as anti-woke as the next traditional leftist (and ‘white privilege’ rhetoric is wildy simplistic) but this is mild affirmative action based on empirical data, not woke-apartheid.
Be cautious of seeing wokeness everywhere in the same way that the woke see nazis everywhere. The bigger concern, IMO, is that this doesn’t become another bureaucratic boondoggle where non-clinical consultants clip the ticket or make triage for doctors far more complicated than it needs to be.
You sound like you have been 1ZB’d. Take a slither of info and turn it into an absolute storm in a tea cup because it suits a political agenda.
where have you been the last 200 years? under a rock?
Politicians interfering in the clinical decision making of highly trained surgeons upon whose skill good outcomes depend, is dangerous. The politicians aren’t the people on call, ever, nor are they likely to be called out of bed at 2am in emergencies as surgeons are. Nor do they engage with stressed-out patients and whanau without a team of tax-payer funded advisors and pr people telling them what to say. Next they’ll be trying to manipulate court proceedings, or control what the media reports to the people.
Snow White: “Next they’ll be trying to manipulate court proceedings, or control what the media reports to the people.”
No! They’d never do THAT. Would they….?
Agree SW
Martyn – I wonder if this is about not having enough medical specialists in NZ to performance operations, and such.
Andrew Little sure did a good job ‘reforming’ the health care sector.
Reactionary Bratwurst – That’s the sad truth…
Social cohesion and social capital are factors that bridge the structural and intermediary determinants of health. They describe the willingness of people living in a community to make sacrifices and to cooperate with each other for the wider benefit. New Zealanders are severely lacking in this area, evidenced by the neoliberal policies we’ve let permeate every aspect of our lives. We don’t give a shit about anyone but ourselves. We think of everything as a pie – if someone gets something, we’ll get less, and we only want ourselves and people we personally think are deserving to get anything for free. I’m just as guilty. I think politicians, landlords and anyone making money and living lavishly at the expense of someone else is revolting, and those people do not deserve free healthcare or education off the backs of the precariat. But realistically, right-wingers are clearly the ones that need those things most. Right-wingers are ignorant, self-absorbed and racist – all things that can be cured with adequate and appropriate education and mental health care.
“Right-wingers are ignorant, self-absorbed and racist – all things that can be cured with adequate and appropriate education and mental health care.”
Yes indeed, re-education camps and “mental health care” will “cure” those right-wingers.
What a frighteningly revealing statement about the contemporary left.
Pope Punctilious 11. “ …ignorant, self-absorbed and racist” is an astonishing thing to be attributing cavalierly to right-wingers, and it would probably apply more readily to the Greens, according to their own public utterances. Nurse Alice may need to chat to her doctor about “ curing” these things by education and mental health care. It’s all been done before, and it doesn’t work.
She also errs in thinking we all think that we’ll get less if others get more. That’s a pernicious wee argument against helping those most in need of help, and it ignores the fact that most children learn to share and learn the pleasure of sharing at quite a young age, especially as members of a family, and even the most difficult families are usually pretty good at helping each other out at crunch times, and at protecting each other.
Alice could perhaps chat to her partner about these things. Perhaps acquaint herself with the army of good people in the community who volunteer and help out with no thought of reward, or of their own material well-being being adversely affected. There are kind, generous and compassionate people everywhere, and that’s a constantly evidenced fact. If anything, most of us who are not politicians, regret that we’re unable to do more to help others than we do. I know no one who thinks the way that Nurse Alice does, and I know a wide range of people right here in New Zealand.
NZders are well known for being generous and compassionate. Looked what happened after the Chch EQ and the Chch mosque attack. A NZ wide outpouring of love and support, including practical
“ight-wingers are ignorant, self-absorbed and racist – all things that can be cured with adequate and appropriate education and mental health care”
You mean shipped to the gulag?
lmao
“You mean shipped to the gulag?”
Yup. That’s what she means. And I’m betting that she doesn’t realise that gulags were labour camps: the term is still used in contemporary Russian. But she’ll be thinking of them in terms of re-education centres which correct wrongthink. Be afraid…..be very afraid….
Nurse Alice: “We don’t give a shit about anyone but ourselves. We think of everything as a pie – if someone gets something, we’ll get less, and we only want ourselves and people we personally think are deserving to get anything for free.”
And this is the way you think, is it? Tsk tsk…..such solipsism! I’m an old lefty: I don’t think that way at all. But if other people believe that what you’re saying here exemplifies leftist thinking, I’m going to have to abandon the left: I certainly don’t want to be tarred with that brush.
I believe the push back against corporatism and capital hoarding is the reference point Nurse Alice is railing against and I agree with her. Greed and one upmanship is the shallow existence and delusion we find ourselves in and only a “re-education” and “mental health adjustment” will get us out of it. I’m backing an economic meltdown to get us there faster than any marxist authoritarian will.
Well said D’Esterre.
The welcome mat is out.
And yet Andrew Little is still a Minister,recently picking up further responsibilities due to the resignation of Michael Wood.
Brilliant minister Andrew Little! Highly regarded by those with an ounce of intellect.
Actually, based on my experience I disagree with you Jason. One of my work colleagues who is Dutch and has been living here about four years got treatment before I did despite me presenting with the same health problem as him two years ago, when he was trying to get citizenship. He has been here for a short time but got referred by his GP and got his scan and diagnosed promptly. I have just had the same treatment two weeks ago and I had to fight and demand to get what he got. I was born here I have paid my taxes.
CIP that’s what’s known as a “lived experience anecdote”. It’s just about two people. We need a lot more data than that to determine if there is ethnic bias in wait-list times. And when you do get a decent-sized sample, it turns out that on average there is no difference in wait-list times between Maaori and Pakeha. Read about it here: https://peterdavisnz.com/2023/06/25/using-ethnicity-to-decide-hospital-waitlists-doesnt-solve-the-real-issues/
cip: just the luck of the draw. We can all see discrimination on the basis of skin colour if we look for it. Even when it doesn’t exist.
what the fuck? it effing exists alright or we wouldn’t be getting all uppity over a bit of preferential treatment for those that need it. We can’t have any of that – non non – it makes us look bad. We might have to face up to our bias and our total fucking ignorance.
Dr doom: “…it effing exists alright or we wouldn’t be getting all uppity over a bit of preferential treatment for those that need it.”
Are you accusing contemporary health workers of discriminating in favour of white people? Have you been in a hospital lately? Last time I was, quite recently, it was a struggle to find any decision-makers who were actually white. Same went for the patients: overwhelmingly Maori and Pacific people.
It’d be a peculiar thing, were (mostly non-white) health professionals discriminating against the (mostly non-white) patients right there in the hospital.
Professionals make decisions based on clinical need. And that’s as it should be.
Have a look at what Peter Davis says about it:
https://peterdavisnz.com/2023/06/25/using-ethnicity-to-decide-hospital-waitlists-doesnt-solve-the-real-issues/
In any event, skin colour is an extrinsic characteristic only: it has no influence on health status, one way or the other.
any decision not made on PURELY clinical grounds violates the basic premise of a national health service
What about human rights gargarin and equity and equality ?
tell that to your grannys hip pa
Rights do not apply here. Equity and equality – fair points – but they go out the window when you have, what I believe to be, a deliberately underfunded healthcare system…a product of the neoliberal era that wishes to privatize as many government services, as practical, using incompetence via under-funding as a way to achieve this aim.
Saying a patient should be lower priority because she’s white, and some white people are said to have done wrong things, is racist, and a Human Rights Offence.
but no-one is saying that, are they. just poor me’s who think they’re being hard done by when the evidence is overwhelmingly in the pejorative.
Yep
100% agree.
Yep.
this is naive – all things being equal – go to the back of the bus, sit down and wait your turn..
ministers with multiple portfolios when they clearly can’t even handle one..it’s just a lolly scramble
Yep
Good call.
Dr doom: “…it effing exists alright or we wouldn’t be getting all uppity over a bit of preferential treatment for those that need it.”
Are you accusing contemporary health workers of discriminating in favour of white people? Have you been in a hospital lately? Last time I was, quite recently, it was a struggle to find any decision-makers who were actually white. Same went for the patients: overwhelmingly Maori and Pacific people.
It’d be a peculiar thing, were (mostly non-white) health professionals discriminating against the (mostly non-white) patients right there in the hospital.
Professionals make decisions based on clinical need. And that’s as it should be.
Have a look at what Peter Davis says about it:
https://peterdavisnz.com/2023/06/25/using-ethnicity-to-decide-hospital-waitlists-doesnt-solve-the-real-issues/
In any event, skin colour is an extrinsic characteristic only: it has no influence on health status, one way or the other.
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