This Thursday, May 1st , The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists will be on strike for 24 hours and protesting outside Public Hospitals with other health workers around the country. Please join them if you can.
You can find the times and places here:
https://maranga-mai.nzno.org.nz/fight_back_for_health
They are doctors who have chosen to remain in the service of the public who have rejected a 1% pay offier because they want the government to retain and recruit senior doctors, not drive them away through low wages and poor working conditions.
They are not doing this lightly. They are striking because we are losing senior doctors.
Health Minister Simeon Brown will tell you the Health budget is blown out. The truth is that successive governments have UNDEFUNDED Health, and this current Coalition is the most draconian in its approach to Public Health to date.
Brown’s agenda is clearly to run down our Public Health system and bolster the Private sector, leading us to the American style of hospital care where, if you don’t have private health insurance, you either don’t get treated or will be burdened with medical debt.
Proof, if proof be needed, of Brown’s plan, is the outsourcing of operations to private hospitals. He has directed hospitals to farm out 10,579 procedures by the end of June at a cost of $50 million.
If he spent that tax payer money hiring doctors and nurses in the Public sector it would put a serious dent in the backlog of elective surgeries.
Instead, the private hospitals will make a fat profit so Brown can boast about reducing hospital waiting times.
See Ruth Hill’s RNZ report on Outsourcing Being Used To Pretend Hospital Wait Times Are Being Fixed
This is appalling.
We need to support our doctors as they strike this Thursday, because their fight is your fight.
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Hastings Hospital main entrance at noon - someone called Simeon the Miniature of Health, perfect!
Great to publicise. the May 1 ralliés supporting doctors. The one at North Shore is from 2.45 to 3.45 so times may vary elsewhere also.