Here's a question for you this morning. How much will ever be enough to spend on health? The answer is there will never be enough, so you've got to do with what you've got. At least that is what Health New Zealand is trying to do. At the moment. We spend thirty billion bucks a year. That's just tax payer money on health. It is middle of the road for the OBCD in terms of percentage of GDP comparisons. Apparently according to Health New Zealand, we're ahead of the likes of the UK, Canada and Sweden, but we're behind France, Switzerland and Germany. I mean, really, what does all this mean? Whether that spending is any good or not is another matter. Ask one hundred people about their experience in the health system and you'll get a hundred different answers. One answer, though, that we should be getting a bit more right, is exactly how much we're spending or planning to spend on health, because how can you know what you're doing unless you know what you're spending and on what. Health New Zealand revised down its deficit for twenty four to twenty five from one point seven billion to one point one What does that mean. It means as recently as October they told us they'd need five hundred million more dollars to run the health system than they did yesterday. That's half a billion bucks difference in less than two months. Why they thought they'd have to pay more for redundancy payments and making up for holiday pay And it seems extraordinary, doesn't it that you could have such a vast difference in such a short space of time. How does this keep happening? It comes after the target surplus for this year fifty four million, somehow more often too, a deficit of seven hundred million. RETTI and Verel are predictably fighting over whose faultness is, as you would expect from politicians. But if we could be a little clearer on the diagnosis, the dollars and the cents being spent, would at least be clearer on exactly what it is we're fighting about. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news Talk set be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.

Here's a question for you this morning. How much will ever be enough to spend on health? The answer is there will never be enough, so you've got to do with what you've got. At least that is what Health New Zealand is trying to do. At the moment. We spend thirty billion bucks a year. That's just tax payer money on health. It is middle of the road for the OBCD in terms of percentage of GDP comparisons. Apparently according to Health New Zealand, we're ahead of the likes of the UK, Canada and Sweden, but we're behind France, Switzerland and Germany. I mean, really, what does all this mean? Whether that spending is any good or not is another matter. Ask one hundred people about their experience in the health system and you'll get a hundred different answers. One answer, though, that we should be getting a bit more right, is exactly how much we're spending or planning to spend on health, because how can you know what you're doing unless you know what you're spending and on what. Health New Zealand revised down its deficit for twenty four to twenty five from one point seven billion to one point one What does that mean. It means as recently as October they told us they'd need five hundred million more dollars to run the health system than they did yesterday. That's half a billion bucks difference in less than two months. Why they thought they'd have to pay more for redundancy payments and making up for holiday pay And it seems extraordinary, doesn't it that you could have such a vast difference in such a short space of time. How does this keep happening? It comes after the target surplus for this year fifty four million, somehow more often too, a deficit of seven hundred million. RETTI and Verel are predictably fighting over whose faultness is, as you would expect from politicians. But if we could be a little clearer on the diagnosis, the dollars and the cents being spent, would at least be clearer on exactly what it is we're fighting about. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news Talk set be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.