Die While You Wait - Ain't it Great?

SOLO-NZ Press Release: Die While You Wait - Ain't it Great?

February 21, 2008

New Zealand's "Die-while-you-wait" public health system has finally been exposed for what some of us have always known it to be: a bloated, bureaucratic, dangerous, inefficient, disaster. Hobbled by taxation, and lied to about the quality of our public health system, most New Zealanders are unable to afford, or haven't even considered, private health care.

"Private health care is what the country should be turning to," Says SOLO spokesman Lance Davey, responding to a ministerial advisory body's report revealing that 40 patients died as a result of serious medical errors in the public health system in 2006-07 (this, on top of hundreds of mishaps that nearly resulted in deaths).

"Contrary to public perception, a privatised health industry is no more 'only for the elite' than the wholly private food industry is. If you accept the 'truism' that health care is an essential service and therefore must be provided by the state, then why do we not see a Ministry of Nutrition and Sustenance with free and subsidised food handed out to all? Food, after all, being even more essential to life than health care. Yet with food production in the hands of private companies, we enjoy affordable food from an ample supply. A completely privatised health system, devoid of the bloat, bureaucracy and busybodies that come with a public health service, would be just the same. You'd get better quality of service, more for your money, more advanced treatments, and you could opt for different providers, all of whom will be competing to attract your custom.

"Health care in the hands of the state is wasteful, crippling, deadly and dangerous. We're forced to pay for it, coerced into using it and dying because of it. It's time for the state to get out of the health care business, their refusal to relinquish the reins of health care to those who can provide it the best is quite literally killing us."

ENDS

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