Geektastic:MaxLV:Geektastic:Personally I never found much to recommend Roosevelt myself. I can't see any reason to provide anything to those who have too little. Survival of the fittest usually wins out in any animal or human society and the fact that all this economic attempt to circumvent that never actually succeeds in reality is the result.
Also, suggesting that one badly maintained hospital is some sort of archetypical exemplar of the preceding 9 years of government is ludicrous. Our local hospital is clean, well maintained and remarkably efficient. Wellington gained a new hospital. I might just as well cite those as exemplars of the excellence of the National government.
Local managers are responsible for organising maintenance of hospitals, not the people who sit in the Beehive.
Local managers cant be held responsible for failed maintenance when they're not given the funding to organise maintenance of hospitals.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/93219807/capital--coast-dhbs-debt-hole-deepens-as-boss-admits-20-years-of-deficits
It's not just one hospital.
Dunedin Hospital is going to cost a billion to rebuild.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/95949112Canterbury DHB:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/92342784/canterbury-district-health-board-budget-deficit-among-the-worst
District health boards are showing signs of financial pressure and some are neglecting spending on repairs and maintenance to try balance their books, a new stock-take by Treasury has found.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11851586
I think we might've found Steven Joyce's $11.7 billion hole. It looks like it was in the consistently underfunded health budgets of the last National Government. With rot, mould and sewage in the walls at Middlemore Hospital, asbestos in the maternity unit, faulty power supplies and God knows what else, the National Party has some serious questions to answer.
The one at the top of my mind is this: How the hell could they have been considering tax cuts when the health system was in such a dire state? Allowing the health system to literally moulder and ooze while offering tax cuts in an election lolly scramble is certainly not a good look. The party says on its website that it, "aspires to a New Zealand where all New Zealanders can flourish". Perhaps it should come with the disclaimer "unless those New Zealanders are sick", because the only thing flourishing at Middlemore seems to be the fungal spores.
I find the situation at Middlemore outrageous. As a New Zealander, I've always been proud of our health system. It's a testament to our spirit as a nation that we care for those who are sick and injured free of charge. It's just part of who we are. Failing to appropriately invest in health means that New Zealanders suffer. No Kiwi should ever have to go into a New Zealand hospital and wonder whether there's raw sewage leaking into the walls.
What kind of Third World outfit are we running? If the situation is this bad at Middlemore, what's it like elsewhere? Are our other hospitals plagued by similar issues? Have patients around the country been put at risk because the "strong economic managers" in the National Party decided to cut costs and cut corners?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12026497
The health service is not the be all and end all. Health is an increasingly expensive business. You want more money? Increase the population of taxpayers and grow the economy. You cannot have a situation like this:
"More than one in three households are contributing nothing to New Zealand's tax take.
A table from Finance Minister Bill English's office shows 663,000 households - or 40 per cent - receive more in tax credits and other benefits than they pay in tax. Thousands more are neutral contributors, or are close to it."
(That quote is from 2016 so the figures won't be accurate but no doubt the general principle is)
and still expect to have a huge pile of cash for investing in everything. I suggest that if people wish to have a Gold Standard health service (and it's a reasonable aim) then they need to be prepared to pay for it somehow and, apparently, 40% or so of them currently are not doing so.
That's a good example of why a liberal social welfare policy like NZ's can never work for the good of the country in the long term.
“Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.”