A newly released briefing has revealed Health New Zealand’s forecasted deficit has risen from $1.4 billion to $1.76 billion, largely due to monthly losses exceeding initial projections.
The health agency had hoped to reach a break-even position by 2026 but is currently losing approximately $147 million each month. Despite efforts to stabilise finances through restructuring and regionalisation, critics argue that the government’s budget cuts are already affecting frontline healthcare services.
The agency reported significant overspending, particularly on recruitment of nurses, which remains a major contributor to the growing deficit.
Financial data from the briefing shows that Health NZ’s total revenue for the latest fiscal year increased to $27.2 billion, but regional health budgets have been scaled back, especially in the Northern and Southern regions. Spending on medical personnel has fluctuated, with a notable drop in spending on doctors and nurses in August 2024 compared to June 2024, despite ongoing recruitment challenges.
Image credit: Jair Lazaro
Frontline health workers in my opinion are lazy arrogant god like twats.
If they really were interested in the health of New Zealanders they would do all they could to educate people to dump the highly processed diet and to eat nutural foods instead. But that would affect the incomes of the pharmaceutical and junk food industries, so never gona happen.
So it is up to us.
Hmmmm would it be in such bad shape had it been properly maintained by party’s like Labour and National over the years they were in government? Would our economy be in such bad shape if they were better financial managers? Would we be having this problem if they limited immigration to only those people who are absolutely essential to New Zealand rather than turning the place into a dumping ground for cheap labour and potentially expensive healthcare patients? Would we be having this problem had those pushing the COVID so called pandemic and its experimental vaccines been shown the door from the outset?
The only deficit I see is one of quality governance by party’s who, in my view, have demonstrated they don’t belong in office, now or ever……