Dr Jackie Blue: How can it be that the health vote has basically doubled from $6 billion to $12 billion, yet fewer people in real terms get elective surgery?
Hon TONY RYALL: That is an astonishing $6 billion question. The facts are that under the Labour Government the health vote nearly doubled, fewer people in real terms were getting elective surgery, thousands were culled from hospital waiting lists, and the new lists did not count all the people. Although the new Government has inherited many worrying failures from the previous Labour Government in the public health system, including the track to financial crisis I outlined yesterday, elective surgery and manipulation are at the forefront of Labour’s failures.
Need we say more?
2 comments:
This is an easy question to answer. About 2.5 billion is just adjustment for inflation. Most of the rest has gone to primary care (essentially all the PHO subsidies, vaccines and community programs). Around about a billion has gone into pure bureaucracy.
Virtually nothing extra has been spent on hospital waiting lists. Meanwhile the population has increased by half a million people.
When Labour took power in 1999 the health system they had a choice - an extensive improvement in service or an expesnive change to the system. They took the latter option which increased the bureaucracy that swallowed the billion.
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