Accessible care to support everyone’s good health.
The Green Party will ensure our health care system is equitable, accessible and properly supported.
Aotearoa has enough to ensure that everyone, everywhere can access timely health care from a supported workforce.
But for years successive governments have underinvested in health services, leading to lengthy wait times and unsafe conditions for the health workers who look after us. Hospitals are understaffed, and GP clinics — important for helping people stay well, not just get better — are so stretched they are closing their doors to new enrolments.
The current Government has reversed decades of progress to provide equitable health care for Māori. Māori are forced into a health system that underserves them and is misaligned with their hauora aspirations.
Private provider costs are locking whānau out of primary health care. This causes health issues to unnecessarily escalate because they are not detected early. Hauora Māori and social service providers are underfunded and restricted by overly prescriptive contracts.
Good health allows all of us to live enjoyable, meaningful lives. The Green Party will expand access to essential primary and dental care. We will work with and fund kaupapa Māori approaches to end health inequities.
Our plans for children, housing, incomes, energy and transport will all support people to keep well by ensuring everyone can access safe, warm homes, nutritious kai and a transport system that encourages active ways of getting around.
It’s time to put a fence at the top of the cliff and support people so they don’t have to rely on ambulances at the bottom.
Our plan
- Ensure public health care services are accessible for all with a focus on prevention and early screening, diagnosis and treatment for non-communicable diseases, such as kidney disease, cancers, diabetes and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
- Fund mobile health care and mental health care clinics, diagnostics services and dental vans to ensure rural communities are able to access health services regularly, including during and after civil emergencies.
- Work towards a publicly delivered, fully free provision of dental and primary care services, including by-Māori for-Māori community clinics.
- Fund one-stop-shops that provides pā harakeke wrap-around services for whānau throughout hapūtanga, after birth, first stages of life, and navigating parenthood.
- Stop overly prescriptive Hauora service contracts and commit to working with Iwi Māori Partnership Boards and Hauora Māori to simplify and improve funding arrangements for providers of health services for whānau, hapū iwi and hapori.
- Increase sustained funding for Pharmac so that it can invest in new medicines and health care devices to enhance treatment outcomes and quality of life.
- Expand the Minor Health Conditions Service to help pharmacies treat common health issues and update the Integrated community pharmacy services agreement to encourage pharmacists to give appropriate medical advice by compensating them fairly.
- Ensure all health care workers have fair wages, fund pay parity for primary care nurses and hauora providers, and set safe staffing levels to support worker wellbeing and quality of care for patients.
- Work towards diagnosing and treating endometriosis faster, including by developing formal clinical guidelines for diagnosing and treating endometriosis and other pelvic pain, and by funding specialised clinics across Aotearoa.
- Increase funding for data and digital infrastructure and capability in the health sector, and regulate and hold private providers of infrastructure to high standards of privacy.