Wall Louisa: SuperGold Health Check Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: SuperGold Health Check Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4760. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. As a member of the Health Committee I firstly want to take the opportunity to congratulate the Rt Hon Winston Peters on his bill and also to acknowledge Barbara Stewart one of my colleagues on the Health Committee who was the original proponent of this piece of legislation.I want to read a quote. It says: “Our vision is for a society where people can age positively where older people are highly valued and where they are recognised as an integral part of families and communities. New Zealand will be a positive place in which to age when older people can say that they live in a society that values them acknowledges their contributions and encourages their participation.” This is from Older New Zealanders: Healthy independent connected and respected. It is from the Office for Senior Citizens it is dated October 2013 and it is part of New Zealand’s Positive Ageing Strategy. One of the interesting components of the strategy is that it is actually about health. So if you go to that particular document what it says in its first bullet point is actually about support to stay well. There are 55000 New Zealanders who are over 65; this Government and this strategy commit to supporting over-65s to stay well.But when you actually look at how it defines how older people are supported to stay well there is a big focus on the high-use health card and one of my colleagues across the House mentioned that earlier. In fact only 14300 of those 55000 65-plus benefit from the high-use health card. That is only 2.6 percent of the New Zealanders who would qualify under this piece of legislation for a visit to a doctor. I concur with all of my colleagues on this side of the House who have contributed today. If older people have an opportunity to go to the doctor—which actually is about a wellness focus. It is about prevention and we heard a lot of that focus in the Health Committee today given we had the Minister of Health talk to us about the Healthy Families New Zealand initiative.So this Government has got a huge commitment in primary health working with communities and preventing their need for secondary and tertiary intervention and it seems that this is a policy idea that actually has some merit. I would have thought that as a reasonable House we would actually send this piece of legislation to a select committee where we can have the discussion and the debate that we have had tonight. Actually finding all the holes in this piece of legislation picking on drafting issues is not constructive. We in this House all have a vested interest to ensure that everybody—and particularly our older people—has three GP visits every year if it means it prevents them from going to hospital. So a $35 cost which is a hospital visit actually pays for 45 older people to have a GP visit as opposed to a 1-night stay in hospital. It costs us $1400 for an older person to stay in hospital for 1 night. If you have pneumonia the average stay is 10 days. If these three visits can prevent an older person over 65 from getting pneumonia and going to hospital for 10 days I would have thought that this House would want to debate the merits of this particular policy proposal.So what I am saddened to say is that this is actually about the money and fundamentally it is about priorities. Just because it was not the Government’s idea why is the Government not actually allowing us to have the debate to do what we did through the inquiry that focused on the needs of young people? Yes I am a bit sad because I think this is a member’s bill that warranted serious consideration by this House. If it could prevent older New Zealanders going to hospital and actually contribute to an efficient and effective health system which we are all committed to achieving then this is a sad day. Thank you.