Mike's Minute: Health services should never be affected by race

We've received another one of these “the Government went against official advice“ stories. This one was around bowel testing. The Government has recently announced that testing has dropped in age from 60 to 58-years-old. The money to pay for that extra testing has come from the separate Māori and Pacific testing, which cuts in at 50-years-old. The official advice is that more lives could be saved if you tested more Māori and Pacific Islanders. The new health minister said in response that what we need to do to save more lives is test more people. He is of course unquestionably right, because the word "people" is critical. We are all people and, given we all contribute to the system that tests us, exempting some from access i.e a non-Māori , is not right. Yet again, this is part of the race-based system we have in this country, which hopefully is slowly but surely being dismantled. Adding to this official advice part of the story is my increasing concern based on the Brian Roache report into the public service and the Deloitte report into Health NZ. It's possible this so-called "official advice" is either pointless or politically motivated. If you start with a system that anyone at anytime can get a test, and then work backwards because that is not effective or affordable, at some point you come to a hap-ish, affordable medium. Age will be a factor because there's no point in bowel testing a 29-year-old. So what is the magic number? They have decided 60years-old, until they decided 58-years-old. Breast screening mammogram have gone through the same debate. But at no point should race be a factor. Yet, it has been. Having just completed my first state participant bowel screen I would be deeply offended if I was bumped, delayed or stopped simply because I am not Maori or Pasifika. I am a taxpayer and a New Zealander. My right is no more or less important or relevant than anyone else's and yet there are those that would argue otherwise. By prioritising race, you are saying one life is worth more than another. You can't do that That's what makes the official advice wrong.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.