Labour to slash surgery delays

By Andrew Laxon

Labour says it will spend about $200 million more each year on cutting waiting times for surgery.

The party's health policy - which has been dribbling out in a series of political leaks for a week - was released yesterday, with a price tag of $825 million over three years.

Health spokeswoman Annette King would not give hard cost estimates, but confirmed about $200 million a year would go on extra surgery.

She said the party was aiming for a maximum waiting time of six months, but "we won't achieve it overnight and we may not achieve it in three years."

Labour's priority would be to reduce the country's worst waiting times, such as a two-year delay for hip and knee operations in Taranaki.

The party also promises to end asset testing in hospitals and rest-homes, but says this is also unlikely within three years.

Labour would match National's extra $124 million for mental healthcare in the next two years and add about $30 million more in the third year. It would scrap the Health Funding Authority and bring back district health boards with a majority of elected members. Polling would be held with local-body elections in 2001.

Doctors would not be paid a fee for each patient they saw but a set amount each year, based on patient numbers and health needs. However, Labour would negotiate with those willing to take part, instead of trying to impose new contracts, as it had done in 1990.

The rest-home owners' association, Residential Care New Zealand, yesterday estimated the asset-testing change would cost $300 million a year and about $1 billion within 20 years because of the ageing population.

Annette King said it would cost $190 million because many elderly people were already avoiding asset testing by placing their homes in family trusts.

But she acknowledged there was unlikely to be enough money to deliver the promise within three years - it had not been included in costings.

The Minister of Health, Wyatt Creech, said Labour seemed to be plucking figures from thin air.

The Medical Association's acting chairman, Dr John Adams, said the structural changes could be bureaucratic and cause instability.

While National's booking system had not yet been successful, he was not convinced that going back to waiting lists would be an improvement.