Fears extra Budget money will steer people away from health insurance
The Health Funds Association is worried that the Government’s much-publicised additional funding for hip and knee operations will steer people away from buying health insurance.
Thursday, June 3rd 2004, 7:35AM
This funding will “double the number of major hip and knee replacement operations performed in public hospitals,” Prime Minister Helen Clark said.
The HFA, while welcoming the move, says people shouldn’t think the extra funding will give them immediate and better access to surgery.
“While $70 million in four years seems like a lot of money…anyone who thinks that it will provide more than a temporary respite to the fundamental and underlying problems faced by the public health system, will surely be disappointed,” HFA executive director Andrea Pettett says.
She says the public hospitals should be used for providing 24-hour, high-level emergency services and that elective surgery should be contracted out to well-equipped private hospital “More cash injections may keep the public hospitals on life support but the sooner the underlying problems are acknowledged the better. Denying the obvious does New Zealanders a disservice; their misplaced confidence in the public hospital system means they fail to arrange health insurance cover that could secure their healthcare needs,” Pettett says.
She says the government should be promoting the need for people to take out health insurance as well as saving for their retirement. “While the government has not been backward in encouraging people to start saving for their retirement; successive governments have not faced up to telling New Zealanders that they will also have to take greater responsibility for funding their own healthcare needs,” she says.
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