James C. McCrae: A Separate Health Department is More Home-grown Apartheid

A recent Winnipeg Free Press article – Citizens panel recommends Indigenous health department – by Katie May reports that a panel of thirty “randomly selected volunteers” is recommending a “dedicated Indigenous health department” in Manitoba, as an “undisputed priority”.

A health department exclusively for Indigenous people may not, however, be an undisputed priority of most Manitobans. Manitoba already has an Indigenous Affairs Secretariat. The very first principle objective of the Secretariat is: “influencing the development and delivery of policies, programs and services that help create safe, healthy and secure environments for Indigenous people.”

Barry Brill: Does healthcare treat people or races?

The new Community Pharmacy Minor Ailments Service will be provided free by local pharmacies to treat minor ailments and ease the pressure on GPs.

This makes a lot of sense in our country’s current self-induced health crisis. In fact, it might well be the most sensible decision yet taken by Ayesha Verrall, since she took over the poisoned chalice of Minister of Health.

Kate Hawkesby: Is this Government going out of its way to lose the upcoming election?

Is it just me, or is this Government going out of its way to lose the upcoming election?

I mean, I’ve had the vibe for a while they’ve given up. Chris Hipkins sounds more and more over it and uninterested in what’s going on in the country he’s supposed to be running.

Grant Robertson has sounded despondent for a while – I’m sure he quietly quit months ago, many of the Ministers behave in a way that would suggest they too have given up, but this latest revelation from the Health Ministry.. come on.

John Robinson: Hipkins is wrong when he claims discrimination by medical workers

When supporting priority to Maori for a range of health care services, including directions to surgeons to take ethnicity into account when deciding major operations, the Prime Minister gave the reason as the need to overcome supposed racial discrimination.

“There is clear evidence that Maori, Pacifica and rural and low-income people have been discriminated against in the health system.”[1] 

His call was for active discrimination, pushing such as Maori to the front of the queue, before others who fail the ethnicity test.

The claim that some people “have been discriminated against in the health system” implies that there is active and widespread discrimination amongst health workers.  This is a lie, an unjustified slur against the many health care workers who do their very best to provide good care to us all.

CA Daverick: Equity Adjuster Tool - Fair Go or Vote Catcher?

Once again, the Control Freak Labour/Green/Te Pati Maori government has seen fit to interfere in the health sector on the basis of “we know best.”

The issue is so-called “equity of access” and there is a view that the health system does not adequately address all the issues in deciding an individual’s place on a surgical waiting list.

Before the introduction of the Equity Adjuster Tool, surgical specialties had their own scoring system which was based on clinical need.

Put simply, the more seriously sick you were, the more rapidly progressive your condition, the greater the impact it would have on your survival and quality of life, the more urgently you received treatment. This is clinical need.

Don Brash: Is racism justified in the health sector?

I’ve just read a depressing defence of the Government’s policy of prioritizing Maori and Pasifika when it comes to surgical waiting lists. It was written by one Will Trafford and published by Te Ao Maori News.

As background, most readers will recall that it was revealed in the New Zealand Herald of 19 June that Health New Zealand (or Te Whatu Ora as they prefer to be known) has introduced “an Equity Adjustor Score” intended to “reduce inequity in the system by using an algorithm to prioritise patients according to clinical priority, time spent on the waitlist, geographic location (isolated areas), ethnicity, and deprivation level”.