Garrick Tremain: Transfusion

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on prioritising the surgical waiting list by ethnicity! 

Mike Hosking: We are all equal, or the country is shot

I suspect Dr Shane Reti is one of the many doctors up and down this country who sees the ethnicity ranking in our health system the same way we do.

He would refuse to do it, he says.

The upside for him is he gets to repeal it in a couple of months should the election go the way we think it will.

Cam Slater: We’re all Maori Now, Aren’t We?

Yesterday we all woke to the news that the government has introduced medical apartheid for real into the New Zealand health system. No longer is need the primary concern for clinicians assessing who gets operations; now ethnicity needs to be taken into account, with the system rewarding people on the basis of who their ancestors were. The government made the largest health reforms in a generation in order to remove what they called the “postcode lottery” of health outcomes. Instead they’ve replaced it with a race-based lottery where your ancestors are more important than clinical urgency.