Lucy O’Hagan
I was trying a break from the news last month, but the headline that punched through was “Christopher Luxon slams Hawke’s Bay doctors for prioritising young Māori and Pasifika” (RNZ, online 11 September). He went on to say he had a “very simple approach to healthcare, which is based off need, not ethnicity or race”.
Very simple indeed, Mr Luxon. Except you failed to say how you are going to assess need. Need is far from simple to define, Mr Luxon, and believe it or not, the health professionals you went on to call “out of line, out of order” have spent decades trying to work out how to direct healthcare to actual health need. It’s tricky.