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Health care costs continue to rise HEALTH spending accounts for $9.6 billion a year - and this year alone the Government will plough an extra $750 million into the sector.But as the stories of patients being culled from hospital waiting lists grow, it appears even the huge sums are barely enough to keep pace with burgeoning demand and the rising cost of health and hospital services. The Government is now spending $4 billion a year more on health than when it came into office - and Finance Minister Michael Cullen has been quietly warning for some time that the current growth in health spending is not sustainable. This year's $750 million dollop of new spending - well signalled in advance of this year's Budget tomorrow - is an attempt by Dr Cullen to peg spending back to more sustainable levels. But he admits it is still too high and the Government should be aiming for a lower growth rate. In 2005, National promised to "ring fence" the health and education budgets for its first two years in office - but beyond that no commitments were given. In short, there appears to be a political consensus that the current growth in spending is unsustainable - but solutions are less easy to agree on as costs soar, due in part to rapid and expensive technological advancements in medicine and an aging population. National's solution is to cut bureaucracy, involve clinicians more in the decision-making process, and better use the private sector to get waiting lists down. But it has not said how much money will be saved by trimming the bureaucracy and where the cuts will be made - or to what extent the private sector will be used and how much that will save. Some savings were anticipated by National from halting the roll-out of universal health subsidies for 25 to 64- year-olds - but that policy may have to be revisited before the next election, because the subsidies - a key plank of Labour's health policy - will already be in place. But it is hospital waiting lists -rather than the cost of seeing a doctor - that Labour has been struggling to explain since the election, with reports that thousands of patients are being referred back to their GPs for assessment as district health boards struggle to cope with rising demand. In his first major speech since taking up the portfolio, Health Minister Pete Hodgson has defended the Government's record, pointing out that while people dumped off waiting lists were "entitled to feel annoyed", 107,000 people underwent surgery last year and that the complexity of the surgery being done has increased. Mr Hodgson says the Government has no choice but to prioritise elective surgery to fit the available health dollar, but denies waiting lists are out of hand. The Government has been blessed for five years by a relatively content health sector. But as clinicians and patients start to speak out over the strains that are beginning to show in the hospital waiting lists, it is clear that even $4 billion more a year is not the answer on its own to the problems facing the health sector. |
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