Simpson Scott: SuperGold Health Check Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: SuperGold Health Check Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4759. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): That was one of the member David Shearer’s better speeches. In fact all that was missing was—Tim Macindoe: The best.SCOTT SIMPSON: It was his best. It may have been his best speech. If he had given speeches with as much vigour passion and commitment when he was the leader of the Labour Party he would not have needed to hold up the two dead fish and we know where that led him.I am speaking in this debate as a member of the Health Committee. I had the privilege of being on that select committee in the last Parliament. I do not come from a medical background but one of the things that you learn as part of our select committee process is that you learn a lot about subjects that you did not know much about when you came into this place. The select committee process gives a great learning experience to a whole range of members. I listened with great and careful intent to the contribution of my colleague and friend Dr Shane Reti who was speaking only a few minutes ago. When Dr Reti speaks he speaks from the experience base of having been a long-serving dedicated professional GP in practice on the ground who knows how GPs work. I think that he made a very valuable contribution in his speech this evening when he asked the very basic question as to how you do actually define what a doctors visit is.He made a very good point because this bill in its current drafting does not really make that clear. This is a bill that simply provides that if you are a valid SuperGold card holder and if you are enrolled as a patient of a primary health-care organisation then you will be entitled to three free doctors visits per year. But the bill does not go on to define in any way what that might entail and how it might be. For instance would it be simply a blood pressure check at the premises of a GP conducted by a practitioner nurse? I think those are good questions. Dr Reti made I think a very good point that the bill in terms of its drafting is lazy and that it is a lazy piece of waffly legislation. He talked about how he thought that some more care could have been given to its drafting in order to target an approach like thisbetter. I am not one who is cynical enough to believe that the member sponsoring and introducing this bill is doing so for purely political motives—that he is doing so simply as a grab for votes from those older senior New Zealanders who feel that they have the need to go and see a GP. The statistics are actually very compelling: most older New Zealanders are not the ones who have difficulty going to a GP. In fact the statistics are very clear that they go to a GP very regularly and do not have a problem in that area.In the last Parliament the Health Committee did a very good piece of work under the chairmanship of Dr Paul Hutchison—another medical practitioner of long standing and high professional regard. The committee put together a very detailed report. We did an inquiry and it was called Inquiry into improving child health outcomes and preventing child abuse with a focus from preconception until three years of age. Why I refer to this is because the evidence that we gleaned as a result of that inquiry was absolutely overwhelmingly compelling. In terms of where we spend our health dollar as a society and as a nation it was estimated in that report that we spend at the moment probably well over half of the total Vote Health on the last 2 years of life. But the report advocated for a bigger spend in the period from preconception through to the age of 3 simply because there is much less need for care in your senior years if we get that part right. I want to quote just one thing from the report. It said: “The evidence is very strong; the first few years of life from pre-conception are fundamentally important for a broad range of child health outcomes and for the achievements of children as adolescents and adults.”I think that one of the faults of this bill is that it is not science based it is not targeted and it does not do what it proposes to do. As I say I am not cynically motivated so I do not think that the mover and the sponsor of this bill is doing so for the wrong reasons; I think that he is probably attempting to do it for the right reasons. But it simply does not achieve what he sets out to do and therefore I cannot bring myself to support this bill. It needs a lot more work. It is a lazy bill and I cannot support it.