On its side and being eaten alive: Healthcare for the NZ public

They cut the health budget, sold out to Big Tobacco, and decimated essential public services. Can a functioning society last through two more years of this?

Labour bequeathed National the litany of healthcare problems the Government is now struggling with. Yet Labour is now rated better than National on health matters.

-Peter Dunne, ex-politician (Labour, National, and United Future.)

I don’t know anything about Mr Dunne. I don’t know why or how he was a politician in three different parties, who owns him, or why he’s an expert on the history of healthcare funding. But surely even the most jaundiced one-sided politician could see what’s happened in the last 12 months. It would take an ambitious effort of covering one’s eyes and plugging one’s ears not to see and hear what the last year’s worth of damaging health policies and cuts have done.

Sure, the last government left Health in a rough state. It was a lame sheep, ambling along with a limp. Underfunded, with decrepit infrastructure, and staffing gaps. They did raise substandard nursing pay a bit, that was good. But lots of work remained.

But Mr Dunne, surely you know that the current government’s policies have been about as helpful for that poor NZ Health sheep as a blowfly infestation.

The lame sheep is now on its side in the paddock.