Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Ryan Bridge: Will we ever have enough money to spend on health?

Transcript

Ryan Bridge: Will we ever have enough money to spend on health? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a question for you this morning. How much will
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: ever be enough to spend on health? The answer is
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: there will never be enough, so you've got to do
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: with what you've got. At least that is what Health
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: New Zealand is trying to do. At the moment. We
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: spend thirty billion bucks a year. That's just tax payer
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: money on health. It is middle of the road for
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the OBCD in terms of percentage of GDP comparisons. Apparently
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: according to Health New Zealand, we're ahead of the likes
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of the UK, Canada and Sweden, but we're behind France,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Switzerland and Germany. I mean, really, what does all this mean?
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Whether that spending is any good or not is another matter.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Ask one hundred people about their experience in the health
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: system and you'll get a hundred different answers. One answer, though,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: that we should be getting a bit more right, is
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: exactly how much we're spending or planning to spend on health,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: because how can you know what you're doing unless you
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: know what you're spending and on what. Health New Zealand
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: revised down its deficit for twenty four to twenty five
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: from one point seven billion to one point one What
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: does that mean. It means as recently as October they
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: told us they'd need five hundred million more dollars to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: run the health system than they did yesterday. That's half
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: a billion bucks difference in less than two months. Why
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: they thought they'd have to pay more for redundancy payments
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and making up for holiday pay And it seems extraordinary,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't it that you could have such a vast difference
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: in such a short space of time. How does this
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: keep happening? It comes after the target surplus for this
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: year fifty four million, somehow more often too, a deficit
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of seven hundred million. RETTI and Verel are predictably fighting
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: over whose faultness is, as you would expect from politicians.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But if we could be a little clearer on the diagnosis,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the dollars and the cents being spent, would at least
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: be clearer on exactly what it is we're fighting about.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to news Talk set be from five am weekdays, or
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.