Simeon attacks nurses on Facebook; the 'doctors of the people' speak against privatisation
More people speaking out daily...but it's falling on deaf ears.
These eminent 'doctors of the people' put into words what so many patients and nurses and doctors are feeling. Paediatrician and Dame Susan Bagshaw and surgeon Dr Philip Bagshaw, the founders of Canterbury Charity Hospital, lay it bare: #neoliberalism has torn apart out public healthcare system for private profit. Privatisation is not more efficient, its a rort. A cash grab, which
has weaponised with 10-year privatisation contracts: a taxpayer handover which will keep harming NZ into the future. We don't need cuts to public services that the average NZ worker relies on, we need the very wealthy and corporations to start paying their fair share. Policy change - and government change - is needed.
#commongood #WealthTax #PatientsOverProfits
The same questions always come up, so let’s adress some of them here.
Isn’t the private sector more efficient than the public?
No, for three main reasons:
The profits they strip out are sent overseas and into deep private pockets. If 100 cents of every dollar go towards healthcare costs in a public system, only 70 or 80 cents go towards patient care in the private sector. The profits get stripped out, and, often, shipped overseas.
Private hospitals and clinics cherry-pick the healthiest, quickest, easiest, least-complex cases. They pocket the profits, and dump the costs back on the public sector. And when something goes wrong, their patients also get dumped back on the public hospitals.
Private healthcare doesn’t just lure out surgeons, specialists and nurses away from the public sector, hollowing it out, it also doesn’t teach and train junior doctors, meaning the next generation gets hollowed out too.
But surely, pushing for cost-effective care must be good?
Well, yes, if that was what we were talking about. But one must remember that private hospitals don’t push for cost-effective care, they push for high-profit care. Those two things are different.
When you view health as a commodity, not as a common good, the people lose. Healthcare is a social good that enables young people to work, and old people to stay independent. Those thinks matter to a society, but they don’t increase quarterly profits for a private, for-profit hospital, especially one owned by private equity and venture capital.
Currently, half of NZ cannot readily access a GP. That’s tragic. It’s insane. It’s a failure of government’s core duties, and it’s great for private profits. Public suffering drives privatisation. $1.4B in Health NZ cuts, operational budgets (0.4%) that moved backwards faster than inflation, and the loss of 1,400 healthcare roles. Add to that 10,620 NZ nurses registering to work in Australia, a 50% increase…the largest number ever.
All of this helps Simon, Luxon, and Seymour push a privatisation agenda years in the making.
It’s bleak times. We’ve got to support our nurses as they strike, and our doctors, like the Bagshaws, as they speak out. They certainly have my respect and deep admiration, not just for their recent comments, but for their livelong work in caring for the people falling through the cracks.
—Dr Gary Payinda
I’ve got a long interview with Odie Matson, an experienced nurse, as we address Simeon’s Facebook Post line by line. Please share it with him, I’d love him on the show to talk about healthcare with someone who can actually talk back. He’s a keyboard warrior on social media. Let’s see him talk for an hour to some people he can’t BS.
I would love to see a debate with you and Brown Gary.
Are you aware of the book “ A Dim Prognosis” by Ivor Popovich.. also enlightening, as you are.
Great Q and A interview with those two.
Your Frontline podcast is amazing too, Dr Gary. I'm sure it's tiering work, but is does keep us(general public) in the loop of how you guys on the healthcare front lines are being affected.
Thank you.