Gone to the dogs? A senior vet casts doubt on our animal veterinary care system as a model for human healthcare.
A former Finance Minister says the New Zealand healthcare system should be modelled on our veterinary care, which does not have waiting lists.
It is among ideas, some new and some that are decades-old, reinvigorated in Sir Roger Douglas' submission to a Treasury consultation on the country’s revenue challenges.
Sir Roger, the father of the 1980s freemarket economic restructuring that became known as “Rogernomics”, was finance minister from 1984 to 1988 in the Fourth Labour Government.
Responding to the Treasury paper He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021, Sir Roger says creating a new welfare system would be a panacea to the nation’s troubles. Healthcare plus superannuation, education, housing, and unemployment all need major overhauls, he argues.
Much of the focus for achieving this lies in finding ways to make it easier for people to pay for it themselves.
Sir Roger says healthcare should be covered by mandatory savings backed up by catastrophic health insurance, which would become more affordable if run in conjunction with his proposed tax policy.
“Vets do not have waiting lists, animals in pain don’t have to wait," he says. "Why should people?
"They will not when they have the money to buy a catastrophic health insurance policy and have money in the bank to pay for small items such as seeing the doctor."
Insurance companies would be allowed to own and operate hospitals and clinics. And Sir Roger proposes that $1000 a year would be contributed to the health account of every child, and an average $2,800 a year contributed to every adult's account. That funding would be indexed to the rate of inflation for health care.
"Government’s role in the health area would largely be confined to topping up low-income earners' yearly fund account, where contributions made to it fall short of the target amount set out for that individual," he argues.
“Patients with private insurance rarely have to queue. The policy outlined in this paper gives you back your tax dollars, in a way that enables you to purchase your own insurance policy.”
But Hans Andersen, the practice principal and owner of Halifax Veterinary Centre in Nelson, says the veterinary care model is not a useful model, especially when considering the customer's bill to repair a dog’s broken leg is around $5000, or basic stomach surgery on a Labrador plus anaesthetic is about $10,000.
Sir Roger models his health insurance model on Singapore, but Andersen says a better guide to how a user-pays model works is to look at the healthcare system operating in the United States.
“New Zealand is lucky to have an excellent standard of public healthcare, unlike market-driven, insurance-based healthcare seen in the United States.
“It’s the wealthiest country in the world and the bulk of the population gets shoddy healthcare.”
Andersen says New Zealand has a proven healthcare model that allows those who can afford it to top up their healthcare needs with private insurance or their own savings.
New Zealand does not have high rates of pet insurance, he adds, compared to somewhere like the UK.
Insurance Business NZ reported in 2019 that while we may be a nation full of pet lovers, less than 10 percent of pet owners had pet insurance.
Sir Roger is critical of He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021. Its focus on the country’s long-term fiscal position and insights “fails in any fundamental way to deal with the social decay that threatens the benefits of what it is to be a New Zealander," he says.
He says his submission, Funding our Future – Self Determination Delivering Prosperity, that it was designed to solve inequality, poverty, and New Zealand’s ongoing economic and social challenges, exacerbated by the “business as usual” approach taken by successive governments.
Treasury/Te Tai Ōhanga expects to release a final report in September.
