Health care 'racially based'

By KEVIN TAYLOR

Labour's method of funding primary healthcare is under attack from the National Party - and under scrutiny from a senior Cabinet minister.

Primary health organisations (PHOs) cover more than three million people. Tomorrow 286,000 people aged 65 and over will get cheaper healthcare and five new PHOs will be announced, making a total of 73.

Race Relations Minister Trevor Mallard is reviewing how they are funded in his drive to weed out race-based funding.

National health spokeswoman Lynda Scott said her party would change the system by basing funding on individual need, not race. It would also allow patients not in a PHO to get cheaper healthcare.

Access PHOs - one of two types and the one attracting the biggest subsidies - qualify for special status if they can show half or more of their patients are Maori, Pacific Islanders or very poor. But the Medical Association said that meant South Island patients missed out on cheaper care as there were not enough Maori and Pacific Islanders.

Ms King refuted claims the formula amounted to race-based funding. "The formula for Access paid a basic amount of money ... and then it had other components that were added on," she said.

"The biggest component in the formula was age. Then there was an added component for Maori and Pacific."

She was confident the formula would pass Mr Mallard's review.

"His programme is to review everything we are doing where there are implications that there could be a race-based favour. He will be reviewing health ... but I'm confident it will be needs-based."

The Medical Association's General Practitioner Council chairman Dr Peter Foley said GPs would not welcome National's plan. "PHOs have been the most dramatic change in the way primary health is funded since 1941 - so we don't want to go through another change in a year or two."