29th October 2008

Creeping privatisation on the agenda?

The Minister of Health, David Cunliffe has accused National of a secret agenda to privatise health if it was ever elected.

“The only conclusion that you can draw from the Business Round Table report into productivity is that they want their friends the National Party to move rapidly towards privatisation of public health.

“This is all part of the Tory’s unholy trinity of raising GP’s fees, giving tax breaks for private health and their promised clinical networks which will return New Zealand’s health providers to the 1990s dog eat dog environment.”

“As I have said the Round Table’s report was a silly report from the National Party’s acolytes that says nothing about health but volumes about why big business has no place in our public hospitals ,”said Mr Cunliffe .

“This report never looks at the quality of health services or how we attract and retain health professionals and it certainly doesn’t look at whether health professionals were underpaid in the 1990s.”

“The only reason why such a report would be published 10 days out from an election is to soften up the public to the idea that National and big business will somehow intervene in health”

“If you look at this document alongside the recent announcements in the Hawke’s Bay by National’s Chris Tremain it is not hard to see where National is heading. It was only last week that Mr Tremain announced that a private health clinic would be set up in 2011,“ said Mr Cunliffe.

“He has told voters that a District Health Board Health centre will be replaced by the private clinic once the lease expires.”

“ If you look at the National rhetoric ,it will be clear to anyone that they want to return to their disastrous health policies of the 1990’s when “user –pay” ruled , hospitals closed and private enterprise models meant the tax payer subsidised business making money out of public health .”:

ENDS

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