Follow The Money In NZ's Health Privatisation Heist

On Friday, Luxon and Reti were at Ormiston Private Hospital to talk up the benefits of private money in public health.

[And defend Casey Costello - that’s a given for now by our National Party Ministers - including the medical doctor Shane Reti.]

Luxon and Reti said we were going to enter into more public private partnerships i.e. privatisating health, and paying to use more health services from private clinics.

Reti said ~10% of electives are currently done in private facilities and talked up the prospect of increasing that # significantly.

I wanted a journalist to ask about costs - of course, everyone knows that it’s possible to use private facilities - but why are they intentionally starving the public health system of funds, while saying they want to pay private facilities more?

Would it not make more sense to invest in the public health system now, rather than axe critical public health services, cut health technology investments, spend $268,000 ($3720 per page) to come up with a Dunedin hospital cost estimate that was immediately debunked by Dunedin’s Mayor, and effectively cut frontline and back office health practitioners?

If we care about our health system, the money they are cutting now needs to be paid back in the future with interest - i.e. they are actively adding to our public infrastructure deficit - and worse - losing top talent that could be helping us solve complex health cases.

Two months ago, a report in the NZ Medical Journal said it was impossible to cut $1.4bn from our health budget without impacting frontline services.

So last week the Government quietly upped the cuts to healthcare a round $2 billion instead.

How does this make sense?

For NZ - I mean.

Besides Chomsky’s observation, the NZ Company Directory provides other clues to the scene

One of the Health Commissioner Lester Levy’s directorships is in a jointly owned private health company called NZ Cylotron.

Cylotron is a product of Mercy Radiology and Cyclowest.

Mercy Radiology is a private radiology clinic.

Cyclowest operates in the private nuclear medicine space, and partners with radiology services. They say “Private providers such as Cyclowest are working to fill the demand gap”.

That sounded similar to what Reti and Luxon said at last week’s press stand up.

Guess which services are going to be privatised?

In total, Lester Levy has 64 current or past shareholdings and Directorships listed. He has also advocated to run healthcare as a business.

And the Health Minister Shane Reti owns shares in a private hospital through “Reti Holdings”.

I’m not suggesting anything is not above board - but this is also what the Ministers rely on.

Plausible deniability.

I am highlighting that public service is usually protected from real or perceived conflicts of interest for a very important reason:

The public need to have confidence and trust in public officials.

Once they don’t, it becomes a slippery slope down the ladder of democratic norms and trust.

When a kid is near a lolly jar without supervision, can we trust that one or two jelly beans haven’t been taken?

Conflicts of interest aren’t a nebulous concept - they are critical cornerstones of a fair and equitable society. They should be protected with every fibre in our being - and moreso when the relevant people have a history of deceit and opportunism:

• Shane Reti, a medical doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath, is on the record defending nicotine and saying he has utmost confidence in Casey Costello. He initially told NZ that Health NZ had a $1.4bn deficit largely because of 14 layers of management. Except it turns out he lied - Reti's office admits there is NO 14 Layers of Management. No retraction to NZ of course.

• Lester Levy calls doctors and nurses who are warning us there is something wrong with the government’s narratives “sabotage” and “resistance” while working part time on $320,000, and saying no doctors at hospitals isn’t really his problem to solve.

• Luxon’s lies are voluminuous and consistent at this point, and worse the PM never backs down after speaking mistruths to the NZ public.

So why should we trust Shane Reti, Lester Levy, or Christopher Luxon?

Note: last year, Chris Luxon told Jack Tame he didn’t think it was a conflict of interest for him to set policy decisions on brightline and CGT while having 7 properties. Yet who profited ~$500,000 worth bigly soon after?¹ Yes.

And now Luxon has ~$500,000 of liquid cash to invest in … other opportunities.

Look, these are all significant decisions the government is ploughing ahead with on health - mostly because many Kiwis rely on the public health system and I believe most of us want a healthy, viable, and productive one.

Lester Levy - Luxon’s hand picked Commissioner - has a long history of advocating for running health as a business and if this government’s answer to its claims of improving productivity, fixing our health system and improving quality care for Kiwis is privatisation, that sounds like a cheaters’ guide to government.

As I noted last week, private health companies themselves face increased costs - which they will pass on to Kiwis - so why are we building up private health enterprise and breaking down our own not-for-profit sector?

If we invest in our public health systems, we build up the skills, technology and infrastructure for our future, and that system is designed to deliver healthcare for Kiwis at a reasonable and transparent cost

A public health system is also designed to help prevent sicknesses and educate the public as opposed to seeking profit in everything it does and says.

If we take shortcuts now, we are merely paying a premium economically but also in our health outcomes, healthcare access, and Kiwis’ lives.

The evidence is available.

After years of breaking down the national health service in England with excuses of “we have no money” under the Tory right wing government, NHS remains reliant on private health outsourcing as costs increase, wait times continue to expand, and outcomes worsen.

In England this year, medical researchers again confirmed:

“The implications are that privatising the NHS is not corresponding with better quality care, and, starkly, that the inverse might be true.. When for-profit provision increases, the quality of care declines.”

A landmark study of NHS privatisation in 2012 found it “significantly” increased avoidable deaths and deteriorated patient care and quality.

In NZ, Whakatāne mayor Victor Luca, a formal nuclear scientist says:

“I have lived in the United States for a couple of years, that system is you beaut. It’s you beaut for 10 percent of the population.”

I don’t think any of us want our health system to look like the UK or US.

One last point - they won’t do this privatisation obviously.

They will outsource bits and bobs as they are doing with education and social housing - it will be a genuine takeover of health by stealth.

And they are not even a year in.

PS

Feeling frustrated yet?

Consider marching on 23-October and joining the movement: Say No to Privatisation of Health (Facebook page)

Related Reading:

• Fears of privatisation by stealth in an overwhelmed healthcare system (Newsroom)

• Health NZ savings target now $2 billion (The Post)

• Frontline health services being compromised as government cuts costs - doctors (RNZ)

• Cuts looming for 'critical' public health services (RNZ)

• How did Health NZ go from $500 million of savings to a $1 billion hole? (NZ Doctor)

• New Zealanders are now dying from an underfunded health system (Substack)

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October Notation: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Mr Levy had a shareholding in Cyclotron. It has been updated to Directorship.

1. It turns out Luxon’s property policies yielded him ~$500,000 in tax free money.

Furthermore one of the two investment properties he sold was in Onehunga, Auckland.

Chris Bishop finally released the list of fast-track projects yesterday- after EDS submitted a complaint to the Chief Ombudsman about Bishop’s refusal to release them.

Guess what one of those projects related to?

A train line through Onehunga.

It doesn’t matter whether the project goes ahead or not - property investment and purchases are guided by available information.

Insider trading is a criminal offence in equities, and while it’s related mostly to public companies, the principle is that we expect markets to be fair and equitable, and we as a society want people who hold positions of trust not to abuse or profit from that power.