Auckland surgeons must now consider ethnicity in prioritising patients | Hacker News Reader

Auckland surgeons must now consider ethnicity in prioritising patients

nzherald.co.nz

9 pointshellrich5 comments

That's very racist.

On the face of it yes, but there are problems of systemic racism towards Māori and Pacific people in New Zealand that have lead to them having poor health outcomes in the first place. This seems a crude way to try and address the issue. A simple solution to a wicked problem. This won’t fix the wicked problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

> A document on the equity adjustor which was leaked to Newstalk ZB shows two Māori patients, both aged 62 and who have been waiting more than a year, ranked above others on the list. A 36-year-old Middle Eastern patient who has been waiting almost two years has a much lower priority ranking.

If true, and there’s not make other factors at play here (like QoL) this is utterly indefensible and disgusting. Racism is not the solution to historic racism. I can’t believe I have to say this but there are ways to improve health outcomes for a group without resorting to racism.

There's an "in defence of" argument made by a former New Zealand Heath Director here:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/rob-campbell-its-sickening-h...

He takes a full population and outcomes view that includes the large private health sector.

His argument is that overall Māori and Pasifika people experience poorly relative to other populations and barely feature at all in private health queues, therefore to achieve equality one arm of the health system has to cater more for Māori and Pasifika people to bring them up to parity and thus achieve equable outcomes for all in the bigger picture.

You're not wrong it's an incredibly hard problem.

It feels so wrong to me that ethnicity can be a factor in healthcare like this. I work with a few refugees. They work on a production line. Poor English and no education means they won't go much further than min wage. They won't get the same priority for healthcare because they're from Asian descent and I can't see the justice in that. Sure I can afford health insurance but there is no way they can.

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