Nationwide shortage of 500 hospital beds is exactly what National wants

ByMartyn Bradbury

You all understand this is exactly what National wants eh…

Nationwide shortage of 500 hospital beds revealed

A deficit of hundreds of hospital beds means services can’t cope with booming demand. What is the Government’s plan? Senior journalist Nicholas Jones reports.

The country is short of 500 hospital beds – a deficit that is piling pressure on services.

An official briefing to Health Minister Simeon Brown has revealed the hospital bed shortage, and warns “demand for acute services has outstripped hospital capacity”.

There are currently about 11,000 hospital beds across the country.

…you all understand this is deliberate, it is manufactured, it’s not like National have done the math and then said, ‘oops, we are 500 beds short’, it’s more, ‘we are cutting 500 beds, will the sleepy stupid hobbits notice’.

National are doing this to every public service, purposely underfunding them so as to allow the private sector to step in as the public service retrenches.

For the ZB Trolls amongst you, allow me to paint a picture you are simple enough to appreciate…

…In the Budget, National allocated just 2.9% increase to health services but inflation was 3.3% and population growth 2.6% while an ageing population adds more to costs.

National gave 2.9% for health but we needed 8% to stand still, is the electorate dumb enough to fall for National’s latest manufactured public service crisis to introduce more failed free market reforms?

The Minister says we can’t afford $1.4billion for health but we could borrow $14billion for tax cuts, again is the electorate dumb enough to believe this?

I don’t think people appreciate just how radical our neoliberal reforms were to public services and no where can you see the grim truth of throwing out egalitarianism and progressive fairness for money and profit margins better than this brilliant Stuff article that highlights the terrible legacy of fucking over our public health system.

Look at these stats and gasp in horror at what we have wrought…

…people claim this can’t be true, but the facts stack it up and it is true.

We have progressively decreased taxing the richest to fund out public services until the public services fall over and the public scream ‘something must be done’ and the Right ‘here’s something’ and they privatise a little more and you get even less.

Te rich haver private health so they don’t care of the public service collapses!

The ease with which the sleepy hobbits of muddle NuZilind are led to give the rich more while hurting the poor is a Kiwi super power.

Feel shame at how you anger is manipulated by the Right every election Kiwi.

Let that shame burn!

You live on your knees for corporations.

 

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11 Comments

  1. Yes, the Natzos want a major shift to private sector (capitalist parasite) health care. The privateers cherry pick though and crank out the “hips and knees” while letting the public sector deal with more difficult procedures and cases and emergency situations.

    The sleepy Hobbits are the “kiwi way” thanks to years of neo liberal individualism which has seen the downgrading of collectivism and interest in others.

  2. The CoC is creaking as the public sector of the economy crumbles (by design). As you eloquently argue Martin, there is a clear cycle of government underfunding, then subsequent lack of performance, then the government (or lack therof) spouting the neolib dogma that public is inherantly less efficient and effective than private services, and finally the dismantling of public services for all for private services for those fortunate enough to be able to afford the new ‘public’ services. Coupled with increases in gated communities and increases in spending for private security for businesses, the noose tightens for those unfortunate enough not to be born with a silver spoon.

    1. Gated communities? The CoC turning us into Soith Africa with barbed wire fortresses. Certainty seems that way.

  3. Those beds should balance out though as after the budget we won’t have the doctors, nurses or allied health staff to service them. N.Zs loss Australia’s gain.

  4. Yes, make everyone so cross with the public health system that instead of wondering why it’s happening, they quietly agree to try the private idea.
    They are so desperate for treatment they think it can’t be any worse, they’ll have to try it.
    Fools, just willfully ignorant fools.
    New Zealand’s social conscience thinking watered down by new immigrants who have always dealt with poor access to health care in their home countries and think nothing of it. They forget, it was one of the main attractions of NZ, our public health system.
    79 million Americans struggle with debt accrued by needing to access healthcare. Healthcare that we take for granted in the public system.
    We need to fight Simian Brown till he gives up and admits defeat.

  5. Unfortunately, as usual, kiwi apathy is making it soo easy . If the population is so asleep and not willing to fight for our public health system then they probably deserve it .

  6. Interesting. But it looks like the same trend was happening under the Clark, Key, English, Ardern and Hipkins governments. So, it is hardly a right-wing thing. It is an all-NZ political spectrum issue.

  7. If the numbers are correct, the graph is interesting. If private beds were replacing public beds, we would expect to see the blue (public) line declining and the red (private) line increasing. We do see exactly that from the late 1980’s to the late 1990’s – not surprisingly that’s the Douglas-Richardson era. But after that, BOTH public and private beds are declining, which is probably in part indicative that as medicine improves, people spend less time in hospital for the same condition or procedure, requiring fewer beds per capita.

    My guess is that after the deliberate destruction of the public sphere by Douglas-Richardson, all subsequent governments have conformed to the artificial constraints imposed by the neoliberal conception of ‘responsible financial management’ that was developed in the Douglas-Richardson era. That is, there has been long term underfunding in the public sphere without the growth in private hospital beds to take up all the slack.

    It could be that National is determined to end this fairly long period of near-stasis/gradual decline by attacking the public sphere more vigorously again in the same way as Douglas-Richardson. By doing that and by providing better financial incentives to private hospitals, they will be able to shrink the state (or those parts of the state they don’t like*) and move more health provision into the private sector.

    *Note. Those parts of the state that National don’t like are those parts that limit the potential profitability of the private sector.

  8. Last week a major private hospital chain in the USA went broke and is in the process of closing 108 hospitals .After pillaging for years and no doubt under cutting the competition they have won the race to the bottom of the cliff which is where NZ is headed .I will be guiding my grand kids to look for a real country to move to when they finish their education .

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