Removing The Chronic Side-Effects Of Kronic Legislation
The Government is taking advantage of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill to push through a ban on Kronic and Kronic like substances.
ACT believes that these substances should not be sold freely to those under 18. However adults, as owners of their own bodies and lives, should not have such a blanket ban imposed on them. Could the prohibitionists please cite one example where prohibition has actually worked?
Click here for a copy of ACT's Supplementary Order Paper, containing our proposed amendment.
Anti-Smoking Bill An Affront To Basic Rights
ACT MPs Hon Heather Roy, Sir Roger Douglas and Hilary Calvert are taking the rare step of issuing this joint press release explaining why they voted against the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill on Thursday. They do so because they believe the constitutional implications of the Bill are greater than its content would suggest. They note that the Bill violates the basic right to freedom of expression.
“Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects the right to freedom of expression. This Bill violates that right. The right to display legal products in a store is basic,” Hon Heather Roy said.
“The fact that the Bill of Rights has been ignored by Parliament is a disgrace. That the transgression was ‘minor’ is irrelevant. Either we uphold the basic rights of all New Zealanders or we descend toward a society where rights have little meaning. It’s no surprise that among recent international attempts to ban or restrict smoking is that spearheaded by North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il. We are hardly keeping good company,” Ms Calvert said.
“The law is yet another tedious example of nanny-statism and political correctness. Parliament is interfering in the lawful activities of ordinary New Zealanders to advance the agenda of anti-smoking activists. That is a travesty of what Parliament is supposed to be about. I fear the activists won’t stop till they’ve achieved complete prohibition,” Sir Roger added.
“Smokers have rights too. We support their rights. We don’t like smoking, but we don’t believe it is for us as MPs to say whether people should smoke or not, much less whether they may display a legal product or not. That our Parliament deems it fit to interfere in people’s personal lives, as it did on Thursday, saddens us,” the MPs concluded.
Larger problems exacerbate drinking culture
If the opportunities to make a difference in their own lives are trivialised ... youth will choose their next best opportunity.
ANY good economics pupil in year 11 will tell you that the cost of everything is what you give up to get it.
By that logic the "cost" of a weekend's binge drinking can be 48 hours of life; drinking, recovering, drinking and recovering again with nothing but sclerotic memories and an empty bank account to show for it.
That's without considering the risk of catastrophic costs, which should be widely understood after too many alcohol related tragedies.
The question at the heart of the youth alcohol abuse debate should be why so many youth have decided that such a destructive activity is worth giving up their other opportunities.
Most of the popular explanations are variations on the theme that alcohol has become more seductive. The lowered purchase age and more outlets have made it more available; the synthesis of alcopop drinks has made it more digestible, advertising has made it more desirable. The logical conclusion is that if only these could be reversed, youth would switch back to safer, more productive activities.
Or perhaps the root of our troubles is that other opportunities have become less meaningful for youth.
Over the past decade, their efforts and choices in education, the housing market, and the economy have been trivialised, meaning they have less to lose by getting sloshed.
Take education.
The introduction of the NCEA in 2002 removed a hard-nosed examination system where results were measured to the percentage point.
The differences in academic performance are now compressed into three grades; credit, merit, and excellence.
This shift has diminished the penalties and rewards associated with good and bad performance at high school.
When the NCEA was introduced, universities struggled for a way to select students suitable for their different courses.
They generally made entry easier.
Meanwhile, the removal of interest from student loans while studying (2001) and then forever (2006) all but vanished the financial costs of tertiary education.
Students see only static repayments in the distant future that they can discount against hoped-for high incomes.
Statistics New Zealand reports that 32% of 18 to 24-year-olds were studying in 2006, up from 24% in 1996.
This has been celebrated as a society up-skilling itself, but it has also reduced the meaning of tertiary education.
Legions of advertisements for too-good-to be-true careers in beauty therapy and tourism are the extreme but real edge of this phenomenon.
For many, this free-for-all has made tertiary education like standing up at the rugby.
You have to do it because other people do, but it doesn't improve your situation.
The result is thousands of youth in education devoid of real meaning.
The middle aged and elderly have experienced an unprecedented windfall in the form of rising house values over the past decade, but this too has helped trivialise the choices youths make.
The Kiwi dream of home ownership was once a juicy carrot for work and thrift.
Since the early '90s, house prices have roughly doubled relative to income, and now it's more of a juicy pie in the sky.
In a recent report, Motu Economic Research predicted that this trend will continue: "There will be a sizeable reduction in home ownership among young people as the population ages ..."
Youth are told they are inheriting a natural environment on the brink of collapse, and that further economic activity may catastrophically damage it. For example, they are regularly told that if all humans were to share our developed world lifestyle, the resources of two and a-half planet Earths would be required.
Reasonable people may disagree about the validity of such statements, but the impact on youth is clear: They come to believe that our way of life is unsustainable, even immoral, and any success they have in it will be nullified by environmental costs.
If the opportunities to make a difference in their own lives are trivialised by lax education standards, made unobtainable in the form of unaffordable housing, and guilt-ridden by way of environmental doom saying, youth will choose their next best opportunity.
For many, that seems to be what one poet called "a faint desire for oblivion".
Even ignoring the impracticality of taking alcohol away from the young, doing so would leave a much more serious problem untouched in our society.
The only real long-term solution to youth alcohol abuse is to attack its root cause; the diminishing ability of youth to make a difference in their own lives.
Air Diet Best for Diabetes, Says ACT
ACT New Zealand is delighted to be counted among the opposition parties calling for healthy eating policies following the release of a report showing New Zealand has one of the highest rates of diabetes among developed countries, says the party’s Forbidden Foods Spokeswomanperson, Heather Roy.
An international team of researchers, working with the World Health Organisation, has found that New Zealand is among the top five nations where blood glucose levels indicate diabetes.
Labour leader Phil Goff says the findings vindicate Labour’s call to remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables.
The Greens’ Spokesperson on the Prohibition of Everything, Sue Kedgley, says that doesn’t go far enough. She wants a ban on the ingestion of any form of animal protein, and a law to make veganism compulsory.
“ACT supports all of the above,” says Ms Roy, over a breakfast of tofu and spirulina. “But none of it addresses causes instead of symptoms. The real problem lies with eating, period. There’s just too much eating going on. Studies have shown conclusively that the vast majority of participants who developed diabetes had been eating for years. Personally I put it down to all those free lunches that people had before Roger’s reforms of the 80s … hatched – shame on him – over fish and chips.
“Yes, even I find it difficult to resist culinary temptation,” Ms Roy sighs, lasciviously eyeing a side-dish of bean sprouts. “But we must bite the bullet (and very little else). Another recent study showed that diabetes can be reversed on a diet of 600 calories a day. While such a regime may fall short of the ideal, no-calorie diet, a law banning the consumption of more than 600 calories should be the minimum objective of all parties’ healthy eating policies.
“Failure to pass such a law will only encourage stroppy individualists in their perverse and anti-social belief that what they eat is up to them,” Ms Roy concludes.
ENDS
Don’t Stop There Jim
ACT New Zealand warmly supports the proposal by Progressive Party Leader Jim Anderton to impose a levy on sugary soft drinks to help fund free dental care for all New Zealanders, says the party’s Spokesman on Dodgy Beverages, Sir Roger Douglas.
“There’s no doubt the consumption of sugary soft drinks has reached crisis proportions. Mr Anderton is quite right in pointing to an epidemic of dental decay comparable to the Bubonic Plague.
“The incidence of obesity, diabetes, cancer, herpes and athlete’s foot is at an all-time high. The causal role of sugary soft drinks in these and all other diseases is incontrovertible. And I am a great believer in treating causes rather than symptoms,” Sir Roger enthuses.
“For that reason I’d suggest to Mr Anderton he shouldn’t stop at a levy. Rebellious people will still insist on imbibing anti-social abominations such as Coca Cola and Gatorade even when they’re made more expensive. Longer term, after we’ve salvaged everyone’s teeth with money from the levy, we should prohibit these beverages altogether.
“In fact, there should be an Index of Banned Beverages, and it should include milk, whose sugar levels are also unacceptably high.
“Mr Anderton has not shrunk from banning things in the past, even when savage right-wing critics have, outrageously, called him such names as ‘Banderton.’ I call upon him to muster up that same degree of public-spirited resolve now and lead a revitalised Progressive Party overflowing with born-again Prohibitionists in spearheading the march to a sugar-free future.
“After all, people need to be saved from themselves … and no one has a prouder record of trying to save people from themselves than Jim Anderton,” Sir Roger concludes.
ENDS
Heather Roy's Diary
The War on Drugs – A Battle Lost.
Last week I surprised some by endorsing Bill English’s comments on prisons as a “moral and fiscal failure”.
This week, an even bigger moral and fiscal failure hit the headlines, with the global war on drugs being labelled “a costly failure” by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The “Global Commission” has no official status although it is a club that includes some very impressive people.
Anyone observing Mexico recently will be aware of the danger of the government losing control of law and order to violent drug lords. Profits from the drug trade are so great that drug gangs can and do field private armies that outgun local police, requiring army support to tackle the narcotics barons. Anyone who doubts the severity of the Mexican drug war needs only to look at the numbers. Over 39,000 people have been killed since 2006. To put this tragedy in context, over 10 times as many people have been killed in the Mexican drug war in the past five years as were killed in the Northern Ireland conflict over a space of 40 years.
Tales of the cruelty of the drug cartels are common and they wield enormous power. The desire for the huge profits made in the drug trade worldwide undermines whole governments. One example is Panama which President Bush (senior) invaded in 1989 because the Panamanian leader, Manuel Noriega, and much of his government were heavily involved in the cocaine trade. Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was the embodiment of the all-powerful drug cartel. Forbes estimated him to be the seventh richest man in the world.
The casualties of drug wars are examples of what the Global Commission calls ‘collateral damage’. Like other wars the war on drugs has unexpected consequences and damages unintended victims.
Amongst the illustrious members of the Commission is Paul Volcker, an economist who has been Chairman of the US Reserve Bank and is widely credited with driving inflation out of the American Economy. Mr Volcker is well aware that the cost of illegal drugs in the US is declining and availability is rising. He knows that the considerable investment in “the war on drugs” has been totally ineffective.
Even if attempts to suppress the drug trade were having some success then the result would be to drive up the price, giving the drug desperadoes an incentive to take greater risks.
This is what the Global Commission report had to say:
“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world … Vast expenditure on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.”
The Global Commission on Drug Policy can be found here.
The Global Commission does not advocate a free for all on hard drugs but rather medicalisation of the problem. Only a small proportion of the money spent on the drug war is spent on drug rehabilitation although it is the only possible way to reduce demand for drugs.
The report advocates the end of criminalisation, marginalisation and stigmatisation of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. It suggests models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organised crime as well as providing health and treatment services for those in need. It recommends investment in activities that both prevent young people taking drugs and preventing those who do from developing more serious problems. Most importantly it calls for breaking the taboo on debate and reform.
New Zealand is not Mexico, Panama or Colombia, but the same principles apply to the way in which we deal with drugs from party pills to cannabis, from pseudoephedrine containing substances to ‘P’. The banning of BZP party pills has merely seen the emergence of new variants with different active substances. Getting tough on ‘P’ by banning cold and flu remedy over-the-counter sales hasn’t reduced the growth in demand for ‘P’. It has denied effective symptomatic relief for hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens. It is time to have a real debate about how to develop effective policy of psychotropic (mind altering) substances, including alcohol.
In April this year the New Zealand Law Commission released its report “Controlling and Regulating Drugs” – a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. It recommends a full scale review of drug classifications to determine controls and penalties and assessing a drug’s risk of harm; taking steps toward legalising cannabis for medicinal use; cutting criminal charges against low level drug offenders and introducing new regulations that aim to reduce the production of legal highs.
Unfortunately this is mainly tinkering with the problem. It is not nearly as insightful into the real drivers of drug activity as the Global Commission report, nor as ambitious of outcome. President Obama has already indicated that the recommendations are a bridge too far for his government and it will be the same in New Zealand. Why? Because politicians are more worried about votes than reducing drug dependency, especially in election year. It’s time we got over that irrational hurdle.
Lest We Forget – 6 June 1944, D-Day – A Battle Won.
The Normandy landings (Operation Neptune) which commenced on 6 June 1944 were the landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II and involved troops from the UK, Canada, Free France, Poland, Norway, Austalia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
The assault was conducted in two phases. Shortly after midnight an airborne assault commenced landing 24,000 troops in France. This was followed at 0630 by the amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured divisions on the coast of France. Decoy operations to distract the German forces from the real landing areas were also deployed under the codenames Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable. The landings took place along an 80km stretch of Normandy coast and were divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
The operation was a massive undertaking with over 160,000 troops landed in total and Allied naval and merchant navy ships with another 5,000 personnel also involved. The invasion involved transportation of soldiers and materials from UK bases by aircraft and ships, air support, naval fire-support and interdiction of the English Channel.
ENDS
Extreme Caring
Hon Heather Roy Speech to Budget Debate; Parliament; Tuesday, June 7 2011.
This Budget was a dire disappointment - an abject failure of nerve. Confronted with the necessity and opportunity to begin a historic sea change away from the knee-jerk borrow-and-spend mentality that has held New Zealand back for so long, the Government instead opted for cosmetics and cowardice.
Yes, the Government acknowledged that borrowing $380 million per week is unsustainable, but failed to make any significant assault on the mind-set that says spending beyond our means and having to borrow heavily is the solution to our problems.
Economic commentator Gareth Morgan captured the essence of our economic malaise very well in his column in this morning’s New Zealand Herald, “Bubbles on beer budget poor life choice”. He points out:
"this is one of the most indebted countries in the world with a net external debt-to-GDP ratio of 90 per cent. We are still behind Ireland (130 per cent) if that's comforting, and a smidgen short of Greece (91 per cent), but Australia isn't as bad (77 per cent) while the US (19 per cent), UK (14 per cent) and Canada (20 per cent), make us look delinquent".
In our present crisis the urgent imperative on government is to make itself much less of a burden on the productive sector. The way to do this is to discipline itself and bring its own runaway spending under control. National’s principles commit the party to small government. Yet, we have seen spending under this National-led Government explode.
And, no, this is not because of the earthquakes. Of our $17 billion dollar deficit this year, only $6 billion is because of the earthquakes.
What we needed, Mr Speaker, was a major application of the brakes. Instead the Government has merely eased back slightly on the accelerator.
One of the reasons the Government has been so timid is no doubt its fear of a chorus of accusations that to act more boldly would have been “uncaring”. This Budget, Mr Speaker, has left unchanged and unchallenged a number of situations that can scarcely be described as caring.
Is it caring, Mr Speaker, to condemn our young folk to soul destroying idleness by outlawing youth rates?
ACT says no.
It is sheer folly, Mr Speaker, to prohibit employers from hiring young workers at rates that they can afford just to appease the perverse sensibilities of socialists and unionists. If a young person is prepared to work for a given rate of remuneration, that should be the end of it. But, then of course, members of the Labour side are not known for their familiarity with the concept of choice.
Is it caring, Mr Speaker, to continue scams like Working for Families which snare thousands of people into the welfare dependency trap, when their own money could simply have been left in their own pockets in the first place?
ACT says no.
ACT simply WOULD leave people’s own money in their own pockets, while targeting welfare at those who genuinely need it. The notion that even people on MPs’ salaries can qualify for Working for Families, as I could have done in 2004, is farcical; it shows that government has moved from focusing its attention on those in genuine need to trying to nanny everyone.
Is it caring, Mr Speaker, to send children out of our school system illiterate?
ACT says no.
Our schools have been failing for decades. When the Principals’ Association criticises teachers’ own literacy, something is very wrong. Our schools have been in thrall to the philosophy that says literacy doesn’t matter. The damage this mind set has caused is incalculable. Once again simply increasing spending on Vote Education is not the answer. State schools at minimum must repair to basics and to the pursuit of excellence. Again, if the field is opened up to genuine competition the natural demand of parents for the best for their children will give both state and private schools no option but to try to meet that demand.
Is it caring, Mr Speaker, simply to throw more taxpayers’ money at our die-while-you-wait public health system when in Singapore, where the Government spends just 3 percent of GDP on health as opposed to our 9 percent, every measure of health success across the board is radically superior to ours, including:
• Infant mortality,
• Child mortality,
• Life expectancy,
• Emergency room waiting times,
• Non-urgent surgery waiting times?
ACT says no.
We need to learn from places like Singapore and introduce a much greater degree of choice for patients by means of private enterprise involvement. Wherever possible, rather than Government simply throwing more and more money, year after year at a system that remains stubbornly inefficient, consumers should have their own money returned to them to spend on the healthcare of their choice as they see fit.
Mr Speaker, to those who would have you believe that ACT is uncaring my response is we are the only party that truly DOES care and has the policies to back our caring up. These same people, Mr Speaker, would also have you believe that ACT is extreme. If by extreme they mean “unhinged”, nothing could be further from the truth. But, if by extreme they mean “passionately and sincerely committed”, then I proudly acknowledge we are extreme.
We are extreme in our desire for a vibrant, full-employment economy that will afford everybody the dignity of work.
We are extreme in our desire to revitalise the health system and end waiting lists.
We are extreme in our desire to transform the education system and end a situation where one in four is functionally illiterate.
Mr Speaker, I would remind the House that the Prime Minister himself once said that he was ambitious for New Zealand. This Budget shows Mr Key’s ambition to be extremely tepid. ACT, by contrast, has no qualms in proclaiming itself to be EXTREMELY ambitious for New Zealand … and to mean it.
Plastic Waka Poor Substitute For Health
ACT New Zealand Health Spokesman Hon Heather Roy today condemned the decision to spend over $1.9 million on a plastic waka promoting the Rugby World Cup, saying the money could have been better spent providing essential health services for hundreds of patients.
“The money could have paid for 51 hip replacements, 31 hiatus hernia procedures, 41 grommet operations, and 116 cataract operations,” Mrs Roy said.
“The combined cost of these procedures adds up to around $1.9 million – the same as what the Government is spending on the waka. These are conservative estimates based on data from private Wellington hospitals who could do the surgery for those on waiting lists almost immediately.
“When we’re borrowing $300 million every week and when people are sitting at home in pain waiting for surgery the last thing the Government should be doing is wasting taxpayers’ money on ‘nice to haves’ like a giant plastic waka,” Mrs Roy said.
ENDS
New Zealand Society Of Physiotherapists
Hon Heather Roy speech to the New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists 2010 Conference; Waipuna Conference Centre, Auckland; Saturday, May 15 2010.
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa
Good morning Physiotherapists. Thank you Jon (Warren, President of the NZSP) for your warm welcome and your invitation to speak and open your 2010 Conference.
These days I can sometimes be heard saying that in a former life I was a physiotherapist. Physiotherapy was the profession I embarked on straight from school and the pathways established in ones formative years always have a powerful effect on future attitudes, outlook and decisions.
It has been many more years than I care to remember since I treated a patient but I still find myself offering – usually unsolicited – advice on how to use a pair of crutches properly or how to stretch effectively before playing sport. I am frequently not thanked for this advice but once a physio, always a physio!
Neurology was my specialty area and it saddens me to see someone who has obviously had a stroke or has a neurological condition and would benefit from even a session or two of mat work in a physio gym to improve their gait or functional activities.
I’m often asked why I would move from a profession that is very well regarded by the public to one that sits somewhere around the level of respect of second-hand car salesmen. There really is no simple answer to that. Politics certainly wasn’t in my master plan, but with changing circumstances came new opportunities and a change of career direction.
Preparing for this speech I was surprised by the amount of change that has taken place in the Physiotherapy profession since I was part of it.
The first piece of legislation I was involved in when I entered parliament in 2002 was the Health Practitioners Competency Assurance (HPCA) Bill (now Act). We battled with the concept of Scopes of Practice and I was particularly grateful at the time for my clinical background and knowledge. I hope we politicians got the balance right between a sensible regulatory environment and ensuring as much as is possible that safeguards for patients are in place.
Scopes of Practice were a significant change for all professions covered by the HPCA. Today they are an accepted and useful part of registration.
One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed is the hefty emphasis on research and I congratulate Physiotherapy New Zealand on its valuable contribution in this area. Your conference theme “Working together, Research and Practice” highlights an important partnership. Without up-to-date research to inform evidence-based changes to practice you merely tread water. Incorporating new findings into your day-to-day clinical practice is an important part of Best Practice and those who embrace and engage in this partnership have a distinct competitive advantage. At the same time those working the area of pure research need to consider the relevance of their work to clinical practice. It shouldn’t be a case of “us” and “them” but both working together.
Change in the entire medical field is evident and it would be fair to say that medicine is moving away from the biomedical model to a more patient centred model.
The patient is a consumer with choices – choices of provider, choices of type of provider and perhaps most importantly, consumers have easy access to information – usually via the internet – which makes them consumers with expectations.
As Minister of Consumer Affairs this is an area I am very interested in. My focus is to promote an environment in which consumers can transact with confidence. But we’re not a business; we’re the health sector I can hear some of you thinking.
I think of it this way:
Your patients are consumers who choose your services – sometimes with help, sometimes without.
You are suppliers of the services consumers want or need.
Those of you with practices of your own will be familiar with this. In order to attract and retain your patients you need to provide quality services and information that accurately describes and promotes your expertise. Promotion is something most health professionals don’t see as part of their job, but it is becoming increasingly important.
I know that you have gone through a rebranding process. Organisations must constantly review and refresh themselves to maintain relevance and tell their story. We have to do it in politics and its every bit as important for organisations and professional bodies too. The ‘Who are you’ – Physiotherapy New Zealand – and the ‘What you do’ – Movement for Life – I think describes exactly modern Physiotherapy practice in New Zealand. Your new logo, also launched last night, is smart and tells the Physio Story.
Congratulations on this body of work. I know it’s not an easy process and it signals the beginning of a marketing campaign. The challenge for you all is brand recognition – to gain national profile and acceptance as a quality standard representing all the different aspects of physiotherapy.
Despite these changes some things remain constant. The role of Physiotherapy New Zealand is to promote advocacy, education, information and services and you’ll see plenty of evidence of these during the course of your conference.
The real measure or test of success is whether or not others, especially younger people see a profession or an organisation as something that they want to join.
I was a bit surprised but very pleased when my daughter decided she wanted to be a physio. She started this year at the Otago School. We’re both enjoying comparing notes – what’s the same, what’s new and what’s changed? She is very excited about her future career and I’m excited for her because Physiotherapy is a profession I still feel proud of.
Enjoy your conference. I know you will go home with new ideas and renewed enthusiasm for the work you do and can be justifiably proud of.
ENDS
Cuts In Health Spending Exposing The Cracks
National’s inability to pump ever-increasing funds into health spending due to New Zealand’s huge fiscal deficit will inevitably lead to further cuts to health services, and has finally revealed what ACT has said all along: that the current health system is broken and needs to be fixed, ACT New Zealand Health Spokesman Sir Roger Douglas said today.
“Labour hid the problem for years by throwing huge amounts of taxpayers’ dollars at it, in a bid to paper over the cracks. These increases were unsustainable, placing a massive financial burden on future generations of taxpayers,” Sir Roger said.
“Now, merely two years later, the façade is crumbling as National tries to reign in the out-of control spending binge which now sees 54 percent of income tax revenue spent on health.
“We all know that a state monopoly will never be as efficient as private enterprise. We all know that competition creates an incentive for businesses to deliver better services to their customers at the best price. Yet, when it comes to health, it seems that competition is a dirty word. This misconception is holding us back.
“All political parties have the same goal – universal access to top-class health care when it’s needed. But where ACT differs from the rest is on how those services are provided. ACT believes that one of the most fundamental changes must be to change the way funding is allocated. Instead of giving funding directly to hospitals and other health providers, it should instead be allocated to individuals.
“Allocating the funding this way will not only give individuals greater control over their own healthcare – allowing them to become the decision maker – but also allow create greater competition amongst hospitals and clinics as they compete for business. This will result in better, more efficient services at the best possible price.
“Unless we are happy to stick with a health system which will continue to cost us more while providing us with less and less, it is clear the system must be changed,” Sir Roger said.
ENDS
