Health Care in New Zealand

Health Care In New Zealand

The healthcare system of New Zealand has undergone significant changes throughout the past several decades. From an essentially fully public system in the early 20th century, reforms have introduced market and health insurance elements primarily in the last three decades, creating a mixed public-private system for delivering healthcare.

• The Accident Compensation Corporation covers the costs of treatment for cases deemed 'accidents', including medical misadventure, for all people legally in New Zealand (including tourists), with the costs recovered via levies on employers, employees and some other sources such as car registration.

• The relatively extensive and high-quality system of public hospitals treats citizens or permanent residents free of charge and is managed by District Health Boards. However, costly or difficult operations often require long waiting list delays unless the treatment is medically urgent. Because of this, a secondary market of health insurance schemes exists which fund operations and treatments for their members privately. Southern Cross Health Insurance, a non-profit-scheme, is the largest of these at about 60% of the health insurance market and covering almost a quarter of all New Zealanders in 2007, even operating its own chain of hospitals.

• Primary care (non-specialist doctors / family doctors) and medications on the list of the New Zealand government agency PHARMAC require co-payments, but are subsidised, especially for patients with community health services cards or high user health cards.

• Emergency services are primarily provided by St. John New Zealand charity (as well as Wellington Free Ambulance in the Wellington Region), supported with a mix of private (donated) and public (subsidy) funds.

In 2005, New Zealand spent 8.9% of GDP on health care, or US$2,403 per capita. Of that, approximately 77% was government expenditure. In a 2010 study, New Zealand came last in a study for the level of medications use in 14 developed countries (i.e. used least medicines overall), and also spent the lowest amount on healthcare amongst the same list of countries, with US$2510 ($3460) per capita, compared to the United States at US$7290.