Jon Voight slams Kiwi healthcare

Angelina Jolie's dad, actor Jon Voight, has denounced our health system as causing "many deaths" in a scathing political protest in Washington DC.

His attack sparked a robust rebuke from Prime Minister John Key, who dismissed Voight's comments as "the views of a protesting actor".

Voight, who has starred in dozens of movies including Midnight Cowboy, Catch 22 and Deliverance, took to the streets beneath Capitol Hill with thousands of other activists.

They were protesting President Barack Obama's plans to restructure the American healthcare system.

The 70-year-old Oscar-winner addressed the crowd shouting, "We would be no better off than the European countries and Canada and New Zealand who suffer greatly from a poor healthcare system. Their rationing system creates many deaths."

After the protest, New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote: "It seemed a little weird when Jon Voight warned the crowd that if President Obama wasn't stopped, the US would wind up with a healthcare system like New Zealand's.

"At the time, I could not help wondering what New Zealand ever did to Jon Voight."

The attack comes after Voight filed a lawsuit against two Kiwi producers earlier this year.

The lawsuit was complicated, but resulted in May in a judgment requiring Voight and the parents of his manager to reimburse attorney fees to the value of $100,000.

The trio had unsuccessfully claimed the producers gave bad advice on movie projects.

Key was alerted to the criticism after questions from the Herald on Sunday.

"The healthcare debate in the US is a passionate one and it brings out all kinds of views - not all of them accurate," a spokeswoman said.

But Sir Roger Douglas, health spokesman for the Act Party, agreed with Voight.

"That would be probably true," he said. "We do have rationing and people die on the waiting list as a result.

"There is no doubt that our health system is in poor shape. Over the last seven or eight years we've seen costs rise well over 50 per cent and output remain stagnant."

But Health Minister Tony Ryall would not be drawn into whether American-style health insurance or New Zealand's public health system had higher fatality rates.

"There's very vigorous debate going on about healthcare in the United States," he said. "We don't need to get involved."