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Katherine Rich: BusinessNZ CEO on the growing calls to invest more into health spending · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZB. Follow this
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand has entered the health debate this morning with
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  Speaker 1: a call to treat health spending as an investment in
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  Speaker 1: economic prosperity. It wants a multi-year boost to Pharmac. You see,
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  Speaker 1: just 4.9% of the spending goes on medicine. The OECD
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  Speaker 1: average is 13.3%. Now, Catherine Rich is the Business New
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  Speaker 1: Zealand CEO, and she's with us.
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  Speaker 2: Catherine, morning.
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  Speaker 1: Good morning.
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  Speaker 2: Warning.
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  Speaker 1: You're walking a tightrope here between what you normally do
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  Speaker 1: and sort of breaching into the wonderful world of health
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  Speaker 1: and expenditure and Pharmac and drugs and workforces and ACC
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  Speaker 1: and stuff like that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, Business New Zealand's made a conscious decision to get
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  Speaker 2: involved in the health debate. Usually you don't see business involved,
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  Speaker 2: but of course, good health policy is good economic policy.
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  Speaker 2: And we do need to look at what we are
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  Speaker 2: spending as an investment because If you invest well and differently,
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  Speaker 2: it means you can get people back to work and
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  Speaker 2: their life. And there are some concerns that we have
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  Speaker 2: had for a long time that we don't get the
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  Speaker 2: proportions of the health dollar spent in the right places.
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  Speaker 2: We'd like to see more for rehab, more for medicines.
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  Speaker 2: We're completely out of kilter with the OECD with the
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  Speaker 2: amount we give to the medicines budget, as you noted.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the medicine thing, to be fair or to defend
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  Speaker 1: the government, I mean, Seymour would tell you that they've
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  Speaker 1: made a fairly concerted effort on Pharmac and I think
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  Speaker 1: they've been successful in that. But at 4.9 to 13.3,
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  Speaker 1: you can't argue with the numbers, can you?
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  Speaker 2: No, you can't. And I mean, already Pharmac has a
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  Speaker 2: list of about 134 drugs which have been approved for investment,
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  Speaker 2: but there's just not the budget. And so some of
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  Speaker 2: those drugs are the ones that can be given to
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  Speaker 2: people so that they can continue to work and contribute
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  Speaker 2: to society. I think also we've taken a good look
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  Speaker 2: at ACC over the years and even ACC admits they've
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  Speaker 2: dropped the ball on investing in rehab and getting people
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  Speaker 2: back to work faster. I mean, the stats aren't great.
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  Speaker 1: And they would argue that they're sort of rectifying that
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  Speaker 1: at the moment. How much of this, do you have
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  Speaker 1: a view on this, how much of this is union-driven expenditure?
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  Speaker 1: In other words, the people who moan the loudest get
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  Speaker 1: given the money and that might be part of the problem.
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  Speaker 2: Well, traditionally we've just continued to spend health in the
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  Speaker 2: same way. We give a certain amount for hospitals and
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  Speaker 2: a certain proportion goes to different parts of the health system.
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  Speaker 2: This is the reason Business New Zealand's got involved. We
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  Speaker 2: think that it is important to test how we spend
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  Speaker 2: the health dollar and to look at how we can
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  Speaker 2: invest in other areas, particularly prevention and rehab and medicines,
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  Speaker 2: because the ageing population isn't hypothetical. New Zealanders are there
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  Speaker 2: and they're heading to the hospital soon. We need to
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  Speaker 2: think about how we can serve them better. So this
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  Speaker 2: isn't about spending more. It's just thinking smarter about how
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  Speaker 2: we spend.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. All right, Catherine, appreciate it. Catherine Rich, who's
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  Speaker 1: business New Zealand CEO. There must be an election campaign
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  Speaker 1: going on.