"Health is a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" World Health Organisation
As a primary principle the Party believes that everyone is entitled to the best possible health service, that the only criterion should be need, that people who need care should be entitled to it as of right, but that the total service has to be within the limits of the resources of the country. The Party further contends that because resources are finite the care and services available must be spread as equitably as possible.
Many people today find it difficult to get the medical attention they need. An estimated 10 per cent does not have access to a general practitioner. There is an overall shortage of doctors which is made worse by an unequal distribution of general practitioners through the country. Affluent suburbia is comparatively well doctored. Medical centres and group practices continue to appear while the poorer working class suburbs and rural areas struggle on with too few practitioners.
Hospitals are often large impersonal places. Waiting lists for operations and chronic sick beds continue to grow. In the last 25 years the standard of New Zealand's health services has fallen from second or third to fifteenth out of sixteen western countries. Prospects for a better future are obscured by a Government White Paper which projects a solution based on bureaucratic centralism and health service, remote control.
New Zealand must train more doctors, and improve conditions for them so that fewer emigrate. What New Zealand must not do is import doctors from countries poorer than ourselves who need them more than we do.
Many people assume that extra money will solve the problem, but already general practitioners in Porirua are some of the most highly paid in the country. Yet Porirua still has a shortage of doctors. Practitioners tend to shy away from the under-doctored areas because they inevitably mean overwork. They are also less attractive places in which to live, and doctors may be isolated from their colleagues and from post-graduate education.
Different solutions may be needed in different places. Extra para-medical services, improved equipment, better organised working hours would all help.
Under a decentralised health service, individual communities could design a service to suit themselves.
Wealthy people get easier access to private hospitals, bypassing the public waiting lists. (Private medical Insurance schemes expect to sign up about half the population within the next few years.) Private hospitals deflect the energies of consultants away from their public duties, and they also remove the pressure from the rich and influential people to work for improvement of the public system.
New Zealand must have a health service and not just a disease service. To a large extent infectious diseases have now been conquered, and the diseases we face today are the diseases of civilisation such as heart disease, diabetes, and environmentally induced diseases. A stable society would be healthier in all these respects. The slower pace of life, the control of pollution, and the regeneration of community would all tend to reduce the incidence of the diseases of stress.
Prevention is also cheaper than cure. A dollar spent on health education can save hundreds of dollars in hospitals.
We recognise there are limits to the amount that can be spent on health.
A health service is very expensive. Demands for money for health are increasing rapidly as more elaborate technologies are developed. In addition, much of society's sickness produces symptoms in individuals who then request medical assistance. Not all these expectations can be met. There are limits to the proportion of society's wealth which should be spent upon health. The problem is how to apply these limits. In a finite world, where the demands are infinite, how should we decide our priorities?
As a general principle, the Values Party believes that decisions are best made at the lowest possible level. Decisions made by large centralised bureaucratic bodies cannot take into account every individual case. We therefore believe that priorities should be worked out by members of the health professions together with the public at a regional level.