Despite the increased pressure it will be under in the wake of Covid-19 the Government has failed to provide meaningful improvement to the health system in Budget 2020, National’s Health spokesperson Michael Woodhouse says.

“The words ‘maintain’ and ‘sustain’ are used almost a dozen times in the overview of Health initiatives, but unfortunately the words ‘improve’ and ‘increase’ are far less frequent.

“Billions of dollars are being spent but are being used to do little more than maintain the status quo and pay for past deficits, while coalition promises such as increasing the age for free breast screening to 74 have been completely forgotten.

“Hundreds of millions have been allocated to our DHBs but this will do little more than pay for their plummeting financial performance under this Government.

“This Government has a terrible record on delivering positive health outcomes for New Zealanders and as a result there have been increased wait times, scrapped health targets and delayed elective surgeries.

“Once again Labour has poured huge amounts of taxpayer dollars into the health system with no apparent idea on how to provide the improvements New Zealanders deserve.”

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