New Zealanders are now dying from an underfunded health system

Telehealth and the government's other bandaid solutions aren't working for Kiwis

On the 16th June, I wrote “Crashing New Zealand’s health system is not the way to prosperity, Prime Minister” to outline the serious detriment the government’s budget cuts and chosen austerity measures were causing.

Besides repealing New Zealand’s smoke free generation law, which would have generated over $45bn of economic and health benefits for NZ, and admitting having more smokers would help fund their tax cuts, there have been more than a few signs that the National-ACT-NZ First government just doesn’t seem to care much for our public health system.

These include, but are not limited to:

1. Broken promise to fund new mental health doctors. Zero funding was provided in the budget despite our mental health crisis;

2. Broken promise to fund 50 new medical doctors. Instead, only half was funded, which Reti tried to blame on Universities, that promptly repudiated the government’s misinformation. This is despite our critical doctor shortage.

3. Broken promise to fund primary care family doctors 14% as GPs warned many would shut or have to raise fees without it. The funding ended up being 4% and Reti told GPs to go and get the difference from sick Kiwis instead.

4. Stopping and delaying major hospital infrastructure builds and investments across the entire country

5. Cutting critical support staff, and freezing frontline hires, leading to doctors doing cleaning duties and making beds.

6. Refusing to pay for doctors and nurses despite claiming they want to fix the shortages.

7. Health professionals have written to tell me:

   1. Some are spending their time to transcribe notes and do administrative tasks.

   2. Two of the most senior people in the Ministry of Health and Te Whatu Ora have said said: “there is no place for GPs of General Practice in our future vision of Primary Care”.

   3. GP practices are failing all over the country, and less doctors are interested in becoming GPs. Kiwis will pay the price over the medium to long term.

   4. The average OECD spend on General Practice is 13-14% of a country’s health budget.

There’s a lot more, but how much time do we have?

The end result is – as I’ve mentioned before and based on Peter Huskinson’s excellent research paper – National-ACT-NZF have given us the lowest health spend per capita this century for NZ and in all comparable countries.

And the back drop is important. Despite the dishonest narrative from this government, it’s not that we don’t have money, it’s only that they put that money elsewhere: roads, landlords, private charter schools, more prison beds, bigger prisons, and so on.

Yet time after time, we have seen Luxon boast about how his Government is giving “record” amounts to health, and “much more” than the last government, as he continues to promote spin over substance, and marketing over reality.

Doctors and nurses have been crying out for help for months now, and most Kiwis are ignorant of how badly our health system is flailing, while Shane Reti, Nicola Willis, David Seymour, and Chris Luxon try to paint a picture that they are doing the responsible, kind thing by ‘fixing’ what appears to be a farcical story that they can’t keep straight.

In March, Reti defended Health NZ, clearly stating: “Health New Zealand board is receiving the level of reporting that they need to do their basic functions, their core functions“.

Apparently that changed five days later, but let’s be clear – no-one has gotten a straight answer on the government’s campaign of clear “disinformation” at all.

Underfunding a health system is not good for Kiwis, but Nicola Willis and Luxon already hold the largest budget deficit in the last 7 years (the only exception was the Covid budget) – driven by their borrowing for landlord and income tax cuts – while we all reap the results of their folly.

Government net debt is now forecast to peak at ~ 44% under Willis and Luxon, as it borrowed $12bn more for tax cuts. They don't have a lot of room to manouvere.

One person it could be good for though is the Honourable Health Minister Shane Reti, who holds significant shares in private hospitals.

Last week, I was told by a doctor that a patient went to Dargaville hospital, and given that they have no doctors and were relying on telehealth, the patient died.

The patient had gone in with a heart attack and the nurse had to rely on telehealth to another underfunded, under-resourced hospital in Whangarei for help.

Note: The hospital stressed the patient’s death had nothing to do with its staffing.

However, this incident mirrorred a similar, historical incident -

“My mother was seen at 10.30pm on a Saturday night, by a young doctor, just starting their career, who should have had tele-health support directly from Whangārei ED.

“Mum was misdiagnosed and sent home, and she died an hour and a half later of a massive heart-attack, at only 62.”

When raising this with the Chief Medical Officer at Whangārei Hospital, Blair was told ‘although we own Dargaville Hospital and employ the nurses, because we outsource the after-hours care provided, to non-DHB doctors, we are not responsible for the care provided there’.

Last week RNZ revealed Dargaville Hospital no longer has any doctors rostered at night, but has had to resort to telehealth.

“I just can’t believe that in 2024, ‘tele-health from Timbuktu’, is considered an acceptable alternative,” Blair said.

"What I want to know is whether recent cuts to the payments made to the visiting locum rural health doctors, which have long been a necessary support our rural workforce, is the reason why Dargaville Hospital can suddenly no longer get doctors?

"Surely, if it has no doctors you need to stop calling it a 'hospital'!"

As I said before, for anyone paying attention, doctors and nurses have been warning that the government’s funding cuts and obsession with statistics and numbers over lives and frontline experiences is actually going to cost lives.

“Eventually somebody will die,” the doctors and nurses are warning, loud and clear.

Those days are upon us, if it wasn’t already.

Around the country, as rates rise, insurance rates hike, rents continue to increase, and people continue to lose jobs and businesses continue to shut down under Tory austerity policies worsening an already soft economy, expect GP costs to increase too – sending more people into EDs for a health system in crisis.

And more people will die, suffer, or have affected care, as our doctors and nurses are telling us, day in, day out.

The budget cuts and re-allocation of money to landlords and private charter schools is hurting us all.

Is this what Mr Luxon, Seymour and Peters meant when they said they were going to put NZ first, and NZ back on track? All the while, Seymour advances his divisive, cruel campaign against Maori rights, Peters overlooks a corrupt Cabinet and leadership team, and Luxon contines to play Ad-Man with the jingle and the note, but nothing underneath.