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

Auckland surgeons must now consider ethnicity in prioritising patients

nzherald.co.nz

40 pointstomohawk10 comments

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Previously:

4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36421140

6 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36397893

7 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36388752

For the counter point, 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 poor outcomes 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.

That's just a sophisticated argument that boils down to: "we will prioritize some people over other people merely because they were born into specific ethnic groups". That is the definition of racism - using inborn/unchangeable characteristics to discriminate for/against.

The places they're looking to apply effort should be at the inputs into health rather than at the point where medical care starts.

Prepare for people missing out on medical intervention when ceteris paribus the only differentiator between themselves and the patient who receives the care is their "race".

Russell Brown has covered this and its nuance. https://twitter.com/publicaddress/status/1670739752528809984

White liberals are the only group on Earth without an in-group preference

“Life expectancy at birth was 73.4 years for Māori males in 2017–2019 (up 3.1 years from 2005–2007), and 77.1 years for Māori females (up 2.0 years from 2005–2007). In comparison, non-Māori males are expected to live to 80.9 years, while non-Māori females are expected to live to 84.4 years.”

https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/growth-in-life-expectancy-slo....

I love how the response to the comment above was you posting random statistics without context, thus illustrating the maxim: if there is any statistical discrepancy between two demographic groups, it must be the fault of white people, who are victimizing the non-white people.

No explanation needed.

Not so much that - those benefitting from the current system should look to assist those suffering under it and ultimately bring change.

It’s pretty incredible that the situation persists. If you have any interest in it, have a look at the below.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/10/e065430

This implies that those benefiting from the current system would not benefit in another system, while the ones not profiting from the current system would automatically start reaping benefits.

The study you linked seems to consider any disparity between demographic groups to be the result of "inequity" without qualifying why they expect the same outcome for all groups.

What's incredible to me is that, despite enormous and long lasting data sets those show stable differences between population groups, this is never considered as a causative hypothesis because the idea that people, their cultures and their beliefs are not equal and equally beneficial on average offends their sensibilities.

There is no obligation to ensure different demographics have equal outcomes, nor is there a way to achieve that that has actually worked.

No way this will breed resentment and be something concrete that can be pointed to to radicalize people.

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