Seymour wrong: health funding makes sense
I was shocked to hear David Seymour, in his recent State of the Nation speech, suggest that Kiwis would be willing to give up their public healthcare for $6000 annually to spend on the private market.
I recently immigrated from the US with my family — two adults and a child under 5. Despite being relatively young and healthy, we still spent an absurd amount on healthcare each year.
By the time you add up employer contributions, employee contributions, deductibles, our HSA, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, and CHIP, our total came to $NZ66,705 for our family — $22,235 per person.
This is all for the privilege of having insurance only as long as we can maintain employment.
The moment you are too sick to work, it all vanishes, leaving you with the choice of crippling debt or death. Healthcare bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US.
The bloated costs of insurance companies and the corporate ownership of hospitals have created a massive anchor weighing down American entrepreneurship. There are countless brilliant, motivated people who never make the leap to start a small business because of the staggering costs associated with routine medical procedures.
There are also countless small businesses that fail because their employees don’t have access to healthcare.
If Seymour is truly looking to encourage entrepreneurship, pushing for the privatisation of healthcare would be a grave mistake.
The only reason private health insurance in New Zealand remains as affordable as it does is the downward price pressure created by a universal healthcare system.
Undermine public health, and that $6000 check from Seymour will seem awfully small compared to the $NZ22,235 you could end up paying if private industry has its way.
Answering the question
David Seymour asked a question. It was, how many people would rather take their $6000 annual tax contribution to health and spend that privately on their own choice of provider? The answer is, very few of us. He is suggesting you can get quality coverage for $6000 when the average spend under that system in the USA is already twice that per person.
Then comes choice: people would have the money but might spend it on groceries, often of necessity. Instead we can have an OK, but not amazing system for half the cost or less that's always there when you need it.
Grave tidings
Most days I read the Bible Reading in the ODT looking for some inspiration. On 25.1.25 the reading from Titus stated "For God has revealed His grave for the salvation of all people". Imagine how little inspiration this brought me. Of course the word "grave" should have been "grace".
In these days of disinformation and misinformation this just shows how it only takes one letter wrong to lead us up the garden path.
Missing books
All the wonderfully funny Maxwell series of books by M.J. Trow have disappeared from the Dunedin Public Library. I was told by a librarian that authors go out of fashion.
Really? Trow is read and enjoyed all over the world. Thankfully, other great humorists still have a presence in the Dunedin library, but there are 19 Maxwell books with more in the pipeline. Might the librarians have a change of heart and purchase the Maxwell books for the new South Dunedin library?
Norm’s advice from down through the ages
It is almost exactly two years since John Lapsley (Uncle Norm) last graced your pages and it is great to see him back again (Opinion ODT 22.1.25) discussing the lives of men (and women) against the changes that have happened in his lifetime and his projections for the future.
Shakespeare, in his famous monologue The Seven Ages of Man predicted a dismal future for the end of our lives – "sans teeth, sans taste, sans eyes, sans everything."
Solon, the Athenian philosopher and statesman, described life as 10 periods of seven years and finished with "When God has granted ten times seven, the aged man prepares for heaven."
As John Lapsley points out, things have changed since then and will change again. Many of us now reach greater ages and remain in reasonable health.
I am getting near the end of my 80s and, like John, living in a retirement village.
I often think of advice that was given me, and which I pass on to others – "Do what you want to do in life before you reach 80".
It is good advice: for many of us humans, things get very much harder after that.
Yanking puppets
So Messrs Luxon and Peters are ultra keen to become puppets of Donald Trump. This does not bode well for New Zealand, given that Trump is intent on imposing tariffs on all goods entering the US, which would include all produce from New Zealand. To our politicians I say, be careful what you wish for. Above all, don’t get yanked into war.
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