The government’s decision to write off the debt for the Canterbury District Health Board has been applauded by Social
Credit Party Leader, Chris Leitch.It is what we called for at the end of August.The crisis at the Canterbury District
Health Board highlights the stupidity of health boards being in debt to the government and requiring them to pay a
6 per cent
capital charge for the land and buildings hospitals occupy.
The capital charge is currently twenty four times higher than the official cash rate of 0.25 per cent. What the
government needs to do now is immediately wipe the slate clean for all District Health Boards and scrap the capital
charge.Then they can focus
their attention on how to deliver high quality health services for the people in the area, not how they're going to cut
services in order to pay back a fictitious debt caused by under-funding in the first place.While the problem may not be
of the Labour Coalition government’s making, it is one that they could solve in a matter of minutes. Any shortfall in
government revenue that writing off those debts might bring about could be easily filled by using some of the $100
billion dollars the Reserve Bank is creating at present.It should not be money extracted out of what taxpayers remit to
the government, which is supposed to be spent on health, education and other services in the first place. The DHB debts
are effectively government owing money to itself so writing them off and getting replacement money from itself at zero
interest via the Reserve Bank is an eminently sensible proposition.Social Credit would dramatically increase health
funding by an additional $4 billion every year (See ‘
financial policy document)