Alliance pledges $850m lift to health

By Andrew Laxon

political reporter

The Alliance is promising universal free healthcare at a rough cost of $850 million a year.

The party's health policy, released yesterday, pledges to make all GP visits and prescriptions free and cut surgery waiting times to a maximum of six months.

It would finance its plans with increased taxes on higher income earners and a tariff rise.

Like Labour, the Alliance promises to reverse National's health reforms.

It would put the Health Funding Authority back into the Ministry of Health and run hospitals through elected area health boards.

Launching the policy yesterday, Alliance leader Jim Anderton took another swipe at Labour.

He said the cost was only a third of the $2.2 billion of tax cuts which National had given away in the past three years.

But he agreed his party's free healthcare plans would be unaffordable if Labour carried out its threat to veto the Alliance's tax increases from $75,000.

"I challenge those parties which are saying they will spend more to tell us exactly where all the income for those policies is coming from."

The party's health spokeswoman, Phillida Bunkle, said an approximate cost breakdown of the policy in its third year was: $380 million for free GP visits (based on a 20 per cent increase in visits), $190 million for free prescriptions, $75 million to cut waiting lists, $79 million to put a 24-hour hospital within an hour's drive of 90 per cent of New Zealanders, $48 million for mental health and $33 million for preventative health.

An Alliance promise to end asset testing in hospitals has been costed at $63 million a year by National.

Asked why these figures added up to $868 million, rather than $850 million, Ms Bunkle said the Alliance would provide detailed costings of all its policies within two weeks.

She said doctors would be paid an average state subsidy of $38 a patient and would not be allowed to charge any fees if they took this money.

The chairwoman of the Medical Association, Dr Pippa MacKay, said doctors would not give up their right to charge fees, and described the policy as totally unrealistic.

The Minister of Health, Wyatt Creech, said the Alliance had become the laughing stock of the health sector with its over-the-top promises of free services and new hospitals for everyone.