Ryan Bridge: We need long term thinking for our health system

Health has always been a portfolio MPs never want a bar of.

You never win. Endless fights with the unions. People waiting for surgery. Constant pressure to keep up with technology. And it’s deeply personal for those who don’t get the care they need - it’s literally life-and-death stuff.

So if the numbers Simeon Brown is putting out are to be believed—and I’ve no reason to doubt them—then he deserves some credit.

Cancer wait times, immunisations, elective surgeries, and ED numbers are all heading in the right direction.

It’s by no means “job done,” and some of the movement is only a few percent—quarter-on-quarter comparisons.

But for a government the media would have you believe is traditionally stingy and ineffective in health, at least we now have measurable results to compare. And they’re not terrible.

Labour will come out today and slam this. They’ll say grandma’s hip operation is being farmed out to the private sector.

And you know what grandma will say? Who cares—I’ve got a new hip.

This is all short-term stuff. The bigger question is how we plan to pay for this expensive system in 20 years’ time when the population crunch hits.

Treasury ran some numbers.

They looked at health spending on pensioners as a share of the overall health budget:1951: 29%
Today: 40%
2051: 63%

So two-thirds of the health budget will be spent on over-65s. And there’ll be fewer workers to pay for it.

The problem with a decent health system is that people live longer as a result. It’s a vicious cycle.

Of course, nobody wants grandma to die—but if Simeon Brown keeps this up, we’ll be bankrupt before that happens.

Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.