The only possible effect of racial discrimination in healthcare is to make sure a person in greater need waits longer for an operation. Photo / 123RF
The only possible effect of racial discrimination in healthcare is to make sure a person in greater need waits longer for an operation. Photo / 123RF
Opinion by Brooke van Velden
OPINION
New Zealand has been the topic of international media headlines this week.
No, I’m not talking about the embarrassment of the Prime Minister needing to bring a spare plane with him while he travelled to China - the other topic that has piqued people’s interest is the news that New Zealand is now considering ethnicity as a factor for health waitlists.
On the surface, it seems like a deeply regressive policy, a far cry from modern sensibilities that tell us things like ethnicity, gender and sexuality shouldn’t have any bearing on how you are treated.
No one will deny that statistics show Māori and Pasifika have worse health outcomes, but adding race to the waitlist criteria won’t make one iota of difference. If the first four criteria of clinical need, time already waited, geographical location and economic deprivation are doing their job, then racial discrimination is not needed.
The only possible effect of racial discrimination is to make sure a person in greater need waits longer for an operation and may die on a waiting list because they had the wrong ancestors.
Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Any government that seriously wanted to address health problems for Māori and Pasifika would look at what is causing them – poor housing, dietary upbringing, environmental quality, immunisation… These are tough challenges for any government to address, but they’re the only realistic way of helping.
It is also a fundamentally un-Kiwi way of doing things. I’ve had friends tell me that their doctors have advised them to revert to their maiden name because it is Māori and would get them faster treatment. Surgeons have told me about the stress of meeting quotas of Māori surgery. A cancer specialist told me that even cancer treatment is being ranked by race, which is backed up by Auckland DHB minutes.
A person who is in great clinical need, has waited a long time, lives far from major medical facilities and is poor could be Māori, European, Pacific, Indian or Chinese, and they should all be treated equally.
I asked the Minister of Health for data to show whether Te Whatu Ora is delivering on planned care. They’re not even coming close.
Between July 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, Te Whatu Ora fell 16,130 procedures short of its planned volume of 132,469. Only two of 12 areas of care met their targets.
Areas such as orthopaedics and ear, nose and throat were thousands of procedures away from meeting their targets.
The health system is slipping away from first-world status and the Government seems uninterested in fixing it.
It has focused on a costly administrative restructure that has created two new mammoth bureaucracies and is prioritising waiting lists by ethnicity.
Much of the problems within the health system can be traced to New Zealand’s general decline in productivity and prosperity. People like to think of New Zealand as a first-world country, but our income figures tell a different story. Until we have a government focused on economic growth, we will continue to see tragedies in our health system.
One of New Zealand’s greatest exports is our experts. And who could blame a nurse for leaving when the Australian median wage is $23,403 more than the Kiwi median wage? Five years ago, it was $17,422.
People used to stay here because the great lifestyle and culture made up for the wage gap.
Now, Kiwis struggle to get medical appointments, are separated by race and are earning even less comparatively.
The next government needs to raise productivity and wages, make government books sustainable and create a culture where work, savings, investment and innovation are rewarded.
We won’t have better health services if every year we plunge further into deficit.
With sustainable economic management and a focus on supporting frontline health workers who are making a difference, instead of expensive new bureaucracies, things can improve.
Act has already pledged a $163 million boost for general practice capitation, with ongoing increases in out years.
That increase provides enough funding to equal the subsidy for 2.5 million extra GP visits.
Labour’s health priorities have been all wrong. They’ve wasted billions of dollars on massive restructures, only to find they haven’t provided anyone with what matters - that when you need treatment, you can get an appointment. Their racial targeting is just a lazy way of papering over their inadequacies.
Sadly, this is a classic example of what’s happening everywhere in the bureaucracy: arguing over identity rather than solving problems. We need to tell the public service that treating people differently based on race is lazy and divisive – they must get better at targeting need equally.
Brooke van Velden, MP, is the deputy leader of the Act Party.
