Quarterly accounts released by Te Whatu Ora raise serious questions about the financial challenges the Government’s claims are facing the health sector, said NZCTU Economist Craig Renney.

“The CTU highlighted at the Budget that the health sector desperately needs more funding. The report released yesterday shows the cuts to health services will go much deeper than previously advertised,” said Renney.

“The report states that $2bn of ‘savings’ are now targeted in health, just in this fiscal year (p.57). That’s a huge potential cut and is clearly not possible from just efficiencies.

“We spend $14.6bn annually on hospital services in New Zealand, and $9bn on primary health services like GP’s. The $2bn ‘savings’ are significantly more than the $130m a month the Government previously claimed. It’s also not clear if this gap is a one-off or ongoing, which would require savings year after year in health.

“It also appears that the Government has underspent on its capital programme (p.54) – spending just $1.6bn from a capital budget of $3.4bn.

“This begs questions about why Ministers are claiming that Dunedin Hospital is now unaffordable when the Government has underspent by $1.8bn in one year alone.

“Ministers clearly have questions to answer about the real nature of the savings now being required in the health sector and why.

“Ministers should be transparent with the public about why pay equity funding is not being provided, why capital investment is not taking place, and why $2bn in savings are now being targeted in health – when the claim at Budget was that health had sufficient funding,” said Renney.

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