Raewyn Kinglsey-Smith

I am speaking out about my situation – not for sympathy – I get all I need from many other old folk suffering similar circumstances.

This is a great town to stumble around in;  people are kind and helpful, I love it. It’s what I see as stupidity or neglect within our health system I wish to comment on.

Once, if we needed a doctor we went and sat in his waiting room for our turn. The wait was seldom long and it cost peanuts.

No one had much money, yet the services were great and our health care had a great reputation.

For over four years, my hip has been deteriorating. My doctor looked at X-rays and said it wasn’t bad enough to see an orthopaedic specialist.

I was directed to physio, which helped keep me moving but doesn’t fix it. I also took myself to a chiropractor, who X-rayed my spine and hip. It remained the same, so I gave that up. There is history to this failing hip besides age, but it would take forever to explain and it’s not the point.

Today is the issue. So, new doctor, new X-rays and I have a referral to see a specialist, who will decide the possible need for surgery.

My referral was acknowledged by the specialist’s office over a month before Christmas, stating that I would receive an appointment in due course. After a month I rang and the response was laughter. It won’t be until well into the new year – more laughter. You are a grade three, that’s a long waiting list.

Q: “So what is grade one?” I ask.
A. “Oh that’s urgent.”
Q. “Ah, so broken, bleeding and life-threatening?”
A. “Yeah, that’s right,” he responds.
Q. “So, what’s grade 2?”
A. “Urgent – like broken – ambulance case, sports injuries, car crashes and stuff.”
Q. “Right I get it. Old damaged joints don’t cut it.

They are all third grade and the list is getting longer as the “baby boomers”, come on board. Only the worst are seen. Okay, so I need to fall over and break it, otherwise I will be shunted down the list till it wears me down and I die?”

Conversation ends.

I know now for sure there is a class thing happening in New Zealand. Those, with money or health insurance, can go “private’. This generally is served by the same surgeons as the public system, so the chances aren’t looking good for many oldies.

Remember, we are just talking about a chat with the specialist – no promise of action yet. Age is a bit of a b**** these days. I had a nursing friend who paid into health insurance all her working life, from when it first started. She retired at 70, the premium skyrocketed and, of course, she could no longer afford it and had to give it up, when she most needed it. Is that fair?

I cannot increase my burial insurance or take a new one because I’m too old. We all pay health tax.

It used to go into a specific fund, but that got emptied into the ”consolidated fund”, (along with our huge superannuation savings fund), where it is spent in whatever way consecutive governments choose to use it – like “think big” for instance.

Today’s kids think us oldies haven’t paid our way, when most have a tale of real hardship that the youngsters wouldn’t believe.

When I was a kid, most of the oldies walked with sticks and didn’t have the option of a hip replacement.

So, I guess it’s back to that for me and plenty of others.

The pain is that the longer we have to wait the more serious the surgery and the less able we are to withstand it and recover well. I am expected that next I will be told I am too old. Foof, the outlook is grim.

It seems health services are going backwards because we are not training enough people and many are off overseas looking for better conditions and higher wages to deal to huge student loans.

How many of you remember when nurses were training in hospitals all over New Zealand. We lived in, the camaraderie was terrific, we worked a full-time roster, including night duty and delivering babies. We learned on the job, and had lectures three times a week for the comprehensive academic training that produced world-renowned nurses. An American friend of Dad’s said, Kiwi nurses were regarded as good as doctors in the States.

Junior nurses received a wage for their work and there was no such thing as student loans.

Apprenticeships like this trained all our tradespeople and professionals alike at a time when money was scarce, seldom wasted and more evenly spread. (New Zealand had only two millionaires in those days – Kerridge and Watties. It was big news when they hit one million. What happened?”

Privatisation of education happened and they are making a killing educating foreign students at exorbitant rates and sending our own youngsters out into the world with the burden of a huge student loan. It is stupid and hateful and results in our youth workforce leaving New Zealand.

Once upon a time, two years of being bonded to work in New Zealand paid for your training and provided us with the professionals and tradespeople that we needed.

The workforce was constantly renewing and stable.

Now, we are importing a workforce who are prepared to accept lower wages and because of student debt our own have to look elsewhere for higher wages.

What a sad, sad state of affairs. So, like my ancestors, I am reliant on my walking stick. I hear people thinking it’s my own fault for not saving. But wages were low and most folk had little spare cash. We had old secondhand cars (I was given mine by mum after she gave up driving) that were expensive to run and cost lots in repairs.

However, we weren’t stressed because we were doing okay. The country shut up for the weekend, we all played sport or went to the beach, had fun and relaxed with friends and communities.

The vultures hadn’t arrived. Governments hadn’t removed the legislation that controlled profit margins that reined in the “capitalist beast”, and kept the economy fair and stable.

Now, it’s every man for himself and too bad if you miss the boat.
We need to stop the gap between the top and working classes and the brutality of student loans.

I love this country, I don’t want to be anywhere else, but the removal of good systems that work well breaks my heart and threatens the promise of the bright future we all worked for and believed in.

What I have observed is the running down of good state-owned assets like railways and education – so that they can be sold off to private enterprise, with the promise to make them better.

So far, I have seen only failure.

When my Dad’s little shop struggled to survive after the arrival of Woolworths, a local undertaker told him “you are in the wrong business, Kingsley”.

People will keep dying and prices can go up. That’s why private enterprise hungers to get into health. They are guaranteed constant clientele, who will pay dearly to be saved from illness, hearing loss, blindness, and rotting teeth. When we are running scared the profits will skyrocket.

They call it good business. I call it extortion, like $600 rentals bleeding young workers and robbing Kiwis of their home-ownership dream.

Mind you, rates are feeling like a rental now. I think it’s vital that we keep privatisation out of health.