Roy Heather: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Roy Heather: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:615;Page:11584] 
2.  
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: Does she believe that race-based statistics provide a basis for race-based health funding; if so why? 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 No. That is a hypothetical question as funding is based on need. 
Heather Roy 
: Does that mean that the Minister rejects the arguments of the Wellington school of medicine and indeed now rejects her entire funding formula? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: No because the Wellington school of medicine’s research stated that both income and ethnicity needed to be considered in allocating health resources. 
Steve Chadwick 
: What recent reports has she seen regarding the influence of ethnicity on health outcomes? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Recent independent research released by Dr Tony Blakelystated that both socio-economic status and ethnicity needed to be considered when we are looking at allocating health funding. I think it is a very timely piece of research indeed. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Why has the Minister paid only lip service to those working at the front line of primary care with a small pilot of the Care Plus health card and why does she not base all funding on that card which uses income and high health needs—not race—to offer cheaper care to the individual patients most in need rather than fund primary health organisations on the basisof location and race? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: In respect of the last comment the member made primary health organisations are not funded on the basis of race and geography. However I am pleased to tell the member—and I know she will be happy about this—that the Care Plus project rolls out around all the primary health organisations in New Zealand from 1 July. By that date all our over-65-year-olds will be funded so they have lower-cost care along with all our under-18-year-olds and all the people who have chronic health needs. That is good news for New Zealanders. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Do ethnically based statistics offer information for us to be able to assess how well health policies are impacting upon different groups within our nation and therefore lead to modifications in those policies? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Yes. 
Deborah Coddington 
: Why does the Government not pay for what is actually wrong with each person rather than indulge in racial stereotyping? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: That question is a nonsense. I think one of the best examples of that was given this morning on the radio by Dr Gay Keating from the Public Health Association when she said that for years we have been funding males between the ages of 15 and 20 at a higher rate than females of the same age. Why? Because they are more often in car accidents and die because of that. We do not cut out funding the treatment services just because that happens. We fund them based on need. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Which party in Government was the first to introduce race-based policies for health delivery; and are its members still in the House? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Many of the members of the party that introduced those policies are still in this House. They have had a conversion I presume because the first year that explicit weightings for ethnicity were included in the funding formulae of the regional health authorities was in the funding formulae of 1993-94. 
Heather Roy 
: How do healthy wealthy Maori need more health funding than poor sick non-Maori; and if they do not need more funding why do they get it? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: A Maori does not get more funding under any formula. The formula is applied to all people within a geographical area. So Mr Ngata does not get more money than Mr Smith. The member fails to understand how funding formulae work.