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  • They are wrecking our health system

    From Rich80105@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 5 16:08:42 2025
  • From It's A Me@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 5 18:18:59 2025
    On 2025-04-05 03:08:42 +0000, Rich80105 said:

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/04/03/i-was-overjoyed-to-move-from-the-us-health-system-to-nzs-but-then-i-could-see-the-cracks/


    The New Zealand public health system and the UK's NHS system would be
    fine, but they are drastically underfunded and understaffed. It's also
    utterly moronic that the national emergency ambulance service is not
    fully government funded and has to rely on charitable donations,
    subscriptions, and sending out invoices for emergency services!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Rich80105@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 5 19:20:21 2025
    On Sat, 5 Apr 2025 18:18:59 +1300, It's A Me <its-a-me@mario.com>
    wrote:

    On 2025-04-05 03:08:42 +0000, Rich80105 said:

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/04/03/i-was-overjoyed-to-move-from-the-us-health-system-to-nzs-but-then-i-could-see-the-cracks/


    The New Zealand public health system and the UK's NHS system would be
    fine, but they are drastically underfunded and understaffed. It's also >utterly moronic that the national emergency ambulance service is not
    fully government funded and has to rely on charitable donations, >subscriptions, and sending out invoices for emergency services!

    You are absolutely correct, It's A Me. As I understand it, the budget
    for health under the current government has been a trivial amount
    greater than the previous year - effectively no increase, with
    inflationary costs met by reducing staffing. Building costs have blown
    out, and the system is starting to break down. Meanwhile, private
    hospital owners have continued to build, to invest in new technology,
    and are growing. Quite often they will use public testing services,
    and they tend to specialise in short term operations with quick
    recovery times - no longer term medical wards for slow recovery or
    decline situations. The policy issue is that they borrow at higher
    rates than the government, maintain more lavish / comfortable / quiet
    premises and are able to charge either insurance companies or the
    public sector with costs that include costs for maintenance and
    capital. So the public sector pays more to private providers than
    their own costs, but they need to do that as public capacity is
    declining.

    Health needs are fairly predicable so using purchasing services from
    the private sector should not really be necessary, but for strange
    reasons National-led governments think that low levels of government
    borrowing are a necessity - our government has much lower debt than
    most countries; as a National it is private debt that is of greater
    concern. Add to that the problems of recruiting when the current
    government is not prepared to pay market rates, and we have a disaster building, with increasing stories about smaller hospitals struggling
    meeting needs from both building problems and staff shortages.

    I suspect that the ACT party want government to get out of public
    hospitals and to move to a system more like the USA, where increases
    in mortality have been attributed to both poor Covid policies and to a
    hospital system that is failing an increasing proportion of the
    population - their average per person cost of health services is
    however well above our current spending . . .

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Tony@21:1/5 to Rich80105@hotmail.com on Sat Apr 5 06:53:33 2025
    Rich80105 <Rich80105@hotmail.com> wrote: >https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/04/03/i-was-overjoyed-to-move-from-the-us-health-system-to-nzs-but-then-i-could-see-the-cracks/
    Too late, Ardern already destroyed it. This government is fighting to get it back to where it belongs.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Willy Nilly@21:1/5 to It's A Me on Sat Apr 5 07:14:00 2025
    On Sat, 5 Apr 2025, It's A Me <its-a-me@mario.com> wrote:
    The New Zealand public health system and the UK's NHS system would be
    fine, but they are drastically underfunded and understaffed.

    Well, everybody wants more money for you-name-it. The way to get the
    health sector back in balance with the public, is to end "health"
    medicine, that is, people should see doctors only if they're sick.
    People have been brainwashed to entrust their health to doctors, when
    people should primarily be looking after their own health.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Rich80105@21:1/5 to Willy Nilly on Sun Apr 6 08:32:35 2025
    On Sat, 05 Apr 2025 07:14:00 GMT, wn@nosuch.com (Willy Nilly) wrote:

    On Sat, 5 Apr 2025, It's A Me <its-a-me@mario.com> wrote:
    The New Zealand public health system and the UK's NHS system would be
    fine, but they are drastically underfunded and understaffed.

    Well, everybody wants more money for you-name-it. The way to get the
    health sector back in balance with the public, is to end "health"
    medicine, that is, people should see doctors only if they're sick.
    People have been brainwashed to entrust their health to doctors, when
    people should primarily be looking after their own health.

    You are absolutely Right, Willy Nilly - and it is happening just as
    you describe it, but it does also depend on what you man by "sick" . .
    The removal of subsidies for prescription charges has meant that some
    are not able to afford to pick up prescriptions - and in many cases
    those who are ill do eventually recover without them. Covid was
    regarded by some anti-vax adherents as a minor short term infection,
    but we are now finding that second and third infections are, contrary
    to the expert advice of anti-vaxxers, leading to longer term
    disability - that may not be what they expected but Freedumb of choice
    is important to many. Being sick however covers more than viral
    infections - sports injuries and age can for example lead to bone deterioration, with GPs providing an initial diagnosis and
    recommending specialist referral - this does reduce the number of
    people going to Hospital Emergency Departments, and makes it more
    likely that Specialists do not waste time having to refer people to a
    different specialist.

    But you are Right in another way, it is well known that scarce
    resources do get used more efficiently. It is getting more difficult
    to get on the patient list for a General Practitioner - around a third
    of GPs have a closed list and will refer others to either another
    practice or to a hospital Emergency Department. That is a blunt
    instrument, but does probably lead in your preferred direction.

    Our government is helping in another way - by not paying competitive
    salaries for nurses and doctors they are encouraging many to seek
    employment overseas - mostly Australia, but also other countries. That
    is helping encourage those that can to purchase health insurance - as
    Nicola Willis pointed out in parliament recently, it is a prime
    motivation of government to deliver profits to business owners; the
    health insurance companies are currently making sufficient profits to
    expand their hospitals - we may have a USA -style health care
    structure sooner than many New Zealanders realise!

    A minor concern with moving in that direction does concern some people
    - overall life expectancy in the USA is reducing; but probably not for
    those that can afford health insurance, so not a big worry, "Right",
    Willy Nilly?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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