\u201cFor many families, pregnancy comes with enough costs and stress already. A Labour Government will ease that pressure by making the scans they need free.\u201d <\/p>\n
Health spokeswoman Dr Ayesha Verrall said Labour wanted to build \u201ca health system that helps people stay well, not just treat illness\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Medicard will give every New Zealander three free doctor\u2019s visits a year and free cervical screening. Now we\u2019re adding free pregnancy scans, helping with the cost of living at one of the most expensive, but also most exciting, times in a family\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labour health spokewoman Ayesha Verrall announced the policy on Tuesday. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
The free maternity scan would be added to a patient\u2019s Medicard after a referral from a health practitioner. <\/p>\n
Every scan a doctor or a midwife deems medically necessary would be funded, which Labour says means women with complicated pregnancies won\u2019t miss out. <\/p>\n
The cost of the free scans would come from revenue created through a new capital gains tax, while the $3m for the workforce would come from Health New Zealand\u2019s baseline funding.<\/p>\n
When Labour announced the capital gains tax last year, it said it would raise an average of $700m a year across the forecast period. <\/p>\n
Most of this is expected to go towards the GP visits and other associated costs, like the Medicard app, new AI scribe technology and an Independent Pricing Authority.<\/p>\n
That was estimated to cost $393.3m in its first year, before rising to around $553m a year in 2028\/29. <\/p>\n
The National Party has attempted to argue that Labour has a large funding shortfall for other promises and has suggested the capital gains tax could be expanded to help raise additional revenue. <\/p>\n
This has been rejected by Labour, which has added that all of its policies will be fully costed and explained. <\/p>\n
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald\u2019s Chief Political Reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFor many families, pregnancy comes with enough costs and stress already. A Labour Government will ease that pressure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,3595,1288,5903,5346,2082,4975,13988,6721,2243,241279,111,43,139,69,22367,10142,5202,26346,2247,30503,3598,32293,7496,210,2248],"class_list":["post-479568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-by","tag-capital","tag-election","tag-expected","tag-for","tag-free","tag-gains","tag-labour","tag-maternity","tag-medicard","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-package","tag-paid","tag-part","tag-planned","tag-pregnant","tag-promises","tag-proposing","tag-scans","tag-tax","tag-through","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}