The Alliance Party says Labour’s Family Doctor Loan Scheme is a superficial fix for a primary care sector in structural collapse.

Alliance Party Health Spokesperson Ethan Gullery says more debt is not the solution for a failing funding model.

He says while Labour’s scheme acknowledges the crisis in primary care, lending money to GPs to buy into practices ignores the reality of how those practices function.

“Credit is not the problem,” says Mr. Gullery.

“The problem is a funding model that fails to reflect the real cost of keeping a community healthy. A GP who takes out a loan to buy a clinic is still operating under the same broken capitation formula the day they open the doors. The loan doesn't change that.”

Mr. Gullery says Labour’s own campaign data acknowledges that one in six New Zealanders cannot afford to see a doctor. He says that the current “per-head” funding model penalises clinics in high-needs areas.

“A clinic in Linwood or Flaxmere managing high rates of diabetes, respiratory disease, and mental health complexity receives funding based on enrolled numbers, not on the reality of what those patients actually need,” says Mr. Gullery.

“The clinics doing the heaviest lifting are being pushed to the brink while GPs burn out and leave the profession.”

The Alliance is calling for a total overhaul of the system, moving away from the “small business” model toward a fully publicly funded Community Health Service.

Under the Alliance plan:

• Salaried Professionals: GPs, Nurse Practitioners, and nurses would be salaried employees, not business owners, allowing them to focus entirely on patient care.
• Integrated Care: Dental, optical, and mental health clinicians would be under one publicly funded model.
• Streamlined Triage: Nurse Practitioners would handle first-contact appointments, while GPs focus on complexity and high-risk cases.
• Prevention First: Practice nurses would lead chronic condition management to keep people out of hospitals.

“Poor oral health is a direct risk factor for dementia, and deferred GP visits become Emergency Department admissions,” says Mr. Gullery.

"Every dollar we fail to spend on prevention, we spend several times over on hospital care later. It is a fiscal no-brainer that successive governments, including Labour, have chosen to ignore."

Mr. Gullery says Labour in Government neglected to address a two-tier employment market in healthcare by failing to include nurses working in primary care in nursing pay equity claims.

“The nurses holding our communities together are overwhelmingly women, yet they have been left out of pay equity settlements covering their hospital counterparts. This is a structural inequality Labour had every opportunity to fix.”

“New Zealand needs primary health care rebuilt as a public good. The Alliance has a plan to do exactly that.”

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