Minister of Health Shane Reti made a bold statement last week.
“We’re already investing more in health than any Government in New Zealand’s history – around $30 billion a year.”
Therefore every man, woman and child is having $5660 spent on them by the government this year for their medical needs.
If you think that sounds a lot, consider that over thirty five percent of us also have private medical insurance, mostly to pay for expensive surgery.
So if about two million people are paying an average of five thousand dollars annually in medical insurance premiums, that’s a further ten billion injected into the health economy each year.
Get my drift?
With a forty billion dollar annual spend, medical care is the biggest industry in New Zealand.
But does it need to be? Could we become a country that doesn’t get so sick and doesn’t need so much spent on medical services?
The broad brush name for the industry/sector is intriguing. It’s Health New Zealand and the Ministry of Health. But it’s really about sickness and disease. The Ministry of Sickness doesn’t sound so good does it?
If we’re healthy we shouldn’t need to have the government spend more than five thousand dollars per person on medical care each year.
In the aftermath of the covid era, you would think the most powerful public health messaging would be about staying healthy. After all, if we’re healthy we won’t be lining up to get an appointment at a GP or waiting for hours in the hospital emergency departments.
Everybody knows the basics of staying healthy don’t they? Eat fresh and non-processed food, have a reasonable amount of exercise and plenty of sleep.
Let’s consider eating. The Ministry of Sickness, sorry Health, says just under one in three New Zealand adults (32 percent) are obese. That’s up from 29 percent a decade and a half ago.
Another third of adults are classed overweight. All up, the New Zealand Health Survey last year estimated only 32.3 percent of adults and 61.2 percent of children are a healthy weight.
Sure, those numbers are based on body mass index (BMI), a figure which is often questioned for its relevance. But then a walk through any mall in any city provides plenty of observational evidence to back up how heavy we are.
Those figures are scary. Being overweight is unhealthy. Is a target of having fifty percent of adults at a healthy weight by the end of the decade worth aiming for?
We did it with smoking. We’ll comfortably hit the target of having only five percent of the population as regular smokers by the end of the decade. That’s because we made smoking uncool.
For the sake of the population’s health shouldn’t we make being fat uncool?
The Ministry has a whole raft of measures explaining how it’s addressing obesity, all of which read well. But they obviously aren’t working because the statistics say we’re getting fatter.
Why then can’t we become a nation of good eaters? If the government can spend hundreds of millions advertising covid matters, why not follow up with good eating and healthy living campaigns?
The “5+ a Day” initiative is meritorious yet it’s a charity run by Vegetables New Zealand, not the Ministry.
It’s also not that effective.
At best only a third of the population actually have 5 servings of fruit and veges five days a week. The most common reason given for not achieving the target is the cost. Many say processed and junk food works out cheaper.
That’s surely fiction, especially at this time of the year. A quick check of the Woolworths vegetable prices today has onions at $1 a kilo, broccoli at $1.30 a head, leeks $2 each, carrots $4 for a 1.5 kg bag and apples $4.50 for a 1 kilo bag.
Surely the reason many prefer processed, prepared or junk foods is the convenience. Many people either can’t be bothered cooking or don’t know how to.
But if we don’t increase our intake of fresh fruit and vegetables, and other non-processed foods, then the population’s health won’t improve.
Former Californian doctor Casey Means gave up a promising and potentially lucrative career as a head and neck surgeon.
She sees Americans becoming less and less healthy because of poor metabolic function due to the food they eat. The most extraordinary statistic is that life expectancy in the world’s richest nation in the world is decreasing.
It was 78.9 years in 2014 – the highest point it’s ever reached - yet was only 77.5 in 2022.
Casey Means sees other alarming statistics. Seventy four percent are overweight or obese, 52 percent have pre or type 2 diabetes, 1 in 37 children have autism (it was 1 in 1500 half a century ago) and there’ll be two million cases of cancer in the US this year.
Her book Good Energy, now a New York Times bestseller outlines the connection between metabolism and health.
As she writes “disease isn’t some random occurrence that might happen in the future. It is a result of the choices you make and how you feel today.”
But Casey Means knows what she’s up against. She believes the food and pharmaceutical industries contribute to a country far less healthy than it was in 1974.
New Zealand’s statistics aren’t quite as drastic as those in the US. Our life expectancy across the population is just under 83 years, and improving annually, although women live longer than men.
Our cancer statistics are terrible though. Excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, we annually register 300 reports for every 100,000 people. It’s the second highest cancer rate in the world behind Australia. Per capita it’s worse than the US.
We are not a heathy nation and our taxpayer-funded per person spend will have to increase until we learn and practice better living habits.
Has the Minister ever thought of some work at the top of the cliff instead of spending more at the bottom?
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
So if about two million people are paying an average of five thousand dollars annually in medical insurance premiums, that’s a further ten billion injected into the health economy each year.
Get my drift?
With a forty billion dollar annual spend, medical care is the biggest industry in New Zealand.
But does it need to be? Could we become a country that doesn’t get so sick and doesn’t need so much spent on medical services?
The broad brush name for the industry/sector is intriguing. It’s Health New Zealand and the Ministry of Health. But it’s really about sickness and disease. The Ministry of Sickness doesn’t sound so good does it?
If we’re healthy we shouldn’t need to have the government spend more than five thousand dollars per person on medical care each year.
In the aftermath of the covid era, you would think the most powerful public health messaging would be about staying healthy. After all, if we’re healthy we won’t be lining up to get an appointment at a GP or waiting for hours in the hospital emergency departments.
Everybody knows the basics of staying healthy don’t they? Eat fresh and non-processed food, have a reasonable amount of exercise and plenty of sleep.
Let’s consider eating. The Ministry of Sickness, sorry Health, says just under one in three New Zealand adults (32 percent) are obese. That’s up from 29 percent a decade and a half ago.
Another third of adults are classed overweight. All up, the New Zealand Health Survey last year estimated only 32.3 percent of adults and 61.2 percent of children are a healthy weight.
Sure, those numbers are based on body mass index (BMI), a figure which is often questioned for its relevance. But then a walk through any mall in any city provides plenty of observational evidence to back up how heavy we are.
Those figures are scary. Being overweight is unhealthy. Is a target of having fifty percent of adults at a healthy weight by the end of the decade worth aiming for?
We did it with smoking. We’ll comfortably hit the target of having only five percent of the population as regular smokers by the end of the decade. That’s because we made smoking uncool.
For the sake of the population’s health shouldn’t we make being fat uncool?
The Ministry has a whole raft of measures explaining how it’s addressing obesity, all of which read well. But they obviously aren’t working because the statistics say we’re getting fatter.
Why then can’t we become a nation of good eaters? If the government can spend hundreds of millions advertising covid matters, why not follow up with good eating and healthy living campaigns?
The “5+ a Day” initiative is meritorious yet it’s a charity run by Vegetables New Zealand, not the Ministry.
It’s also not that effective.
At best only a third of the population actually have 5 servings of fruit and veges five days a week. The most common reason given for not achieving the target is the cost. Many say processed and junk food works out cheaper.
That’s surely fiction, especially at this time of the year. A quick check of the Woolworths vegetable prices today has onions at $1 a kilo, broccoli at $1.30 a head, leeks $2 each, carrots $4 for a 1.5 kg bag and apples $4.50 for a 1 kilo bag.
Surely the reason many prefer processed, prepared or junk foods is the convenience. Many people either can’t be bothered cooking or don’t know how to.
But if we don’t increase our intake of fresh fruit and vegetables, and other non-processed foods, then the population’s health won’t improve.
Former Californian doctor Casey Means gave up a promising and potentially lucrative career as a head and neck surgeon.
She sees Americans becoming less and less healthy because of poor metabolic function due to the food they eat. The most extraordinary statistic is that life expectancy in the world’s richest nation in the world is decreasing.
It was 78.9 years in 2014 – the highest point it’s ever reached - yet was only 77.5 in 2022.
Casey Means sees other alarming statistics. Seventy four percent are overweight or obese, 52 percent have pre or type 2 diabetes, 1 in 37 children have autism (it was 1 in 1500 half a century ago) and there’ll be two million cases of cancer in the US this year.
Her book Good Energy, now a New York Times bestseller outlines the connection between metabolism and health.
As she writes “disease isn’t some random occurrence that might happen in the future. It is a result of the choices you make and how you feel today.”
But Casey Means knows what she’s up against. She believes the food and pharmaceutical industries contribute to a country far less healthy than it was in 1974.
New Zealand’s statistics aren’t quite as drastic as those in the US. Our life expectancy across the population is just under 83 years, and improving annually, although women live longer than men.
Our cancer statistics are terrible though. Excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, we annually register 300 reports for every 100,000 people. It’s the second highest cancer rate in the world behind Australia. Per capita it’s worse than the US.
We are not a heathy nation and our taxpayer-funded per person spend will have to increase until we learn and practice better living habits.
Has the Minister ever thought of some work at the top of the cliff instead of spending more at the bottom?
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
Doctors need educating on nutrition and courses on this and culinary courses on healthy food should be included in Medical Schools. Many people overseas are calling for this. I agree with you entirely Rodney. The more countries spend on pharmaceuticals the less healthy they are. I recall posters on eating healthily used to be on display in health centers. Now it is posters on equity. Apparently it is racist to suggest Maori and Pasifica are overweight and suggesting this and the relationship between it and poorer health statistics.
Children need to be taught about nutritional food . They frequently don't even know , I have found, a cream bun, sweets and a bottle of fanta is an unhealthy lunch.
Smoking at only 5% ?
Maybe, but that will be replaced with lung problems from vape products.
Anyone know how $1.9Bn disappeared under Ardern for mental health ?
Any any accountability ?
As I recall, virtually every new government boasts about how much extra money they are/ are going to put into the health service. I don't wish to hear this, what I want to hear is that through efficiencies, they have been able to improve services for the same money.
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