THURSDAY 29 JULY 2004
Silly Season Has Come Early
“The responses of the National and ACT parties to the Auckland District Health Board’s initiative to relieve pressure on
its emergency department suggest that the silly season has come early,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today.
“The Auckland DHB is providing financial incentives for those patients in its busy emergency department whose medical
conditions are clearly minor to use private accident and medical services. This is a novel initiative which might
provide some positive lessons.”
“But, because the DHB is calling the financial incentive a ‘voucher’, both the National and Act parties are suggesting
that this represents acceptance of their own voucher proposals for the health system. The fact that the DHB is using the
same name for a fundamentally different situation is immaterial to the politics of stretching the reality in order to
point score.”
“If the DHB had chosen to call its initiative a subsidy then it probably would have been accused of introducing
stereotyped policies of the former Soviet Union,” concluded Mr Powell.
ENDS