19-05-2023, 01:56 PM
This twitter thread by 'Kiwi Kali' is so enlightening as to the value of yesterday's prescription charge change to the least advantaged in our population:
"I've been a doctor for over 20 years. As a new graduate in the early 2000s at Middlemore, it took a long time for us to figure out why patients were being readmitted when they'd been discharged with antibiotics for pneumonia or medication for heart failure. Turned out that they were too whakamā to tell us that they couldn't afford what was then a $3 prescription fee. So they quite rightly came back into hospital for a $700/night readmission. Middlemore started sending people home with packs of antibiotics & other common medications, preventing costly readmissions & improving people's health. If it was that obvious 20 years ago, there's no way it's not still a problem now. Health care is so broken, at so many levels, that reducing one barrier to care can only be a good thing."
"I've been a doctor for over 20 years. As a new graduate in the early 2000s at Middlemore, it took a long time for us to figure out why patients were being readmitted when they'd been discharged with antibiotics for pneumonia or medication for heart failure. Turned out that they were too whakamā to tell us that they couldn't afford what was then a $3 prescription fee. So they quite rightly came back into hospital for a $700/night readmission. Middlemore started sending people home with packs of antibiotics & other common medications, preventing costly readmissions & improving people's health. If it was that obvious 20 years ago, there's no way it's not still a problem now. Health care is so broken, at so many levels, that reducing one barrier to care can only be a good thing."