Katherine Rich
speaker
46 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 13 Sep
Katherine Rich’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, Business New Zealand's made a conscious decision to get involved in the health debate.
Usually you don't see business involved, but of course good health policy is good economic policy.
And we do need to look at what we are spending as an investment because if you invest well and differently, it means you can get people back to work and their life.
And there are some...
concerns that we have had for a long time that we don't get the proportions of the health dollar spent in the right places.
We'd like to see more for rehab, more for medicines.
We're completely out of kilter with the OECD with the amount we give to the medicines budget, as you noted.
No you can't and already Pharmac has a list of about 134 drugs which have been approved for investment but there's just not the budget and so some of those drugs are the ones that can be given to people so that they can continue to work and contribute to society.
I think also we've taken a good look at ACC over the years
and even ACC admits they've dropped the ball on investing in rehab and getting people back to work faster.
I mean, the stats aren't great.
do you have
Well, traditionally, we've just continued to spend health in the same way.
We give
A certain amount for hospitals and a certain proportion goes to different parts of the health system.
This is the reason Business New Zealand's got involved.
We think that it is important to test how we spend the health dollar and to look at how we can invest in other areas, particularly prevention and rehab and medicines, because the ageing population isn't hypothetical.
New Zealanders are there and they're heading to the hospital soon and we need to think about how we can serve them better
So this isn't about spending more.
It's just thinking smarter about how we spend.
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