{"id":57471,"date":"2025-10-03T02:53:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T02:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/57471\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T02:53:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T02:53:06","slug":"labour-warns-its-getting-harder-to-access-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/57471\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour warns \u2018it\u2019s getting harder to access healthcare\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn top of that, there\u2019s the wait.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s urgent, and you can\u2019t see your GP for three or four weeks, you have to go down to 2nd Avenue [Accident and HealthCare].<\/p>\n

\u201cSo sometimes, instead of paying for groceries, they\u2019ll go to urgent care because they\u2019ll get turned away at the hospital. It could be a 78-hour wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lujan-Quilty said she wanted to know if Labour could come up with a means-tested scheme where middle-class people could have a card \u2013 similar to the community services card \u2013 offering reduced-cost healthcare.<\/p>\n

\"MembersMembers of the public listened to what Labour MPs Dr Ayesha Verrall and Jan Tinetti had to say about the New Zealand health system. Photo \/ Bijou Johnson<\/p>\n

Verrall told NZME before the meeting that she was consistently hearing it was \u201cgetting harder to access healthcare\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoctors are going on strike<\/a>, and the cost of GP care is going up.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most obvious ways we can see it is now one in six New Zealanders say they can\u2019t afford to go to the GP,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Labour this week published an open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, demanding the high cost of seeing a doctor be fixed.<\/p>\n

Verrall said recently completed upgrades to Tauranga Hospital<\/a>, worth $21 million, were \u201cuseful\u201d but \u201cnot likely to change emergency department wait times\u201d.<\/p>\n

Verrall said emergency departments were full of people who missed out on getting care in the community earlier.<\/p>\n

\" Labour MP, Dr Ayesha Verrall, said, “It\u2019s getting harder to access healthcare under Christopher Luxon\u2019s government.” Photo \/ Bijou Johnson<\/p>\n

Health Minister Simeon Brown released performance data showing more Bay of Plenty patients were being seen within four months for first specialist assessment and elective procedures compared to earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat that didn\u2019t show is nationally, the performance indicator has got worse under this Government,\u201d Verrall said in response.<\/p>\n

She described other actions taken by the Government, such as outsourcing elective surgeries to the private sector to reduce elective surgery waitlists, as a \u201cshort-term solution\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have the wrong priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verrall said the “$300 million tax break<\/a>” the Government granted tobacco companies \u201cwould go an awful long way to settling the nurses\u2019 pay claim or the senior doctors, or reducing a lot of the co-payments people are paying at the GPs\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said public hospital recruitment difficulties would eventually \u201cdrive us towards an American health system where you get care on the basis of your ability to pay\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this cost-of-living crisis, healthcare is out of reach for even middle New Zealanders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said in response that Labour spent six years promising to fix healthcare but left the system in worse shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of delivering for patients, they pushed through a botched merger in the middle of a pandemic \u2026 ” <\/p>\n

\" Health Minister Simeon Brown during the opening of the new ICU and HDU at Tauranga Hospital in August 2025. Photo \/ Brydie Thompson<\/p>\n

\u201cLabour\u2019s record speaks for itself: emergency department wait times soared, specialist and elective surgery waitlists blew out, and childhood immunisation rates plummeted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey scrapped the DHBs without putting in place the systems needed to deliver consistent care, and patients paid the price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said the Government was \u201cfixing that\u201d, with record health funding of \u201cmore than $30 billion this year alone\u201d, putting patients first and improving outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve reinstated health targets to drive accountability, and already we are seeing progress: more patients are being treated faster in emergency departments, more children are being immunised, more cancer patients are receiving treatment faster, and fewer people are waiting for a first specialist assessment or surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the Government was \u201cdelivering results, restoring accountability, and putting patients back at the centre of healthcare\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bijou Johnson<\/a> is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty. A passionate writer and reader, she grew up in Tauranga and developed a love for journalism while exploring various disciplines at university. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies from Massey University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOn top of that, there\u2019s the wait. \u201cIf it\u2019s urgent, and you can\u2019t see your GP for three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[542,16502,6726,2550,8455,47963,134,527,302,6721,10110,111,139,69,3111,19328,312,47964,61,47965,8218,24750],"class_list":{"0":"post-57471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-access","9":"tag-ayesha","10":"tag-become","11":"tag-even","12":"tag-getting","13":"tag-harder","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-healthcare","16":"tag-its","17":"tag-labour","18":"tag-middle","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-out","23":"tag-reach","24":"tag-says","25":"tag-spokesperson","26":"tag-to","27":"tag-verrall","28":"tag-warns","29":"tag-zealanders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57471","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=57471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}