NZ Budget 2025: anything less than a 5% increase in health funding amounts to merely standing still

NZ Budget 2025: anything less than a 5% increase in health funding amounts to merely standing still

Health Minister Simeon Brown. Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesMinister of Health Simeon Brown claimed earlier this year that health funding in New Zealand has never been higher and that suggestions of underfunding are “fake news”. On the bare statistics, Brown isn’t wrong. The allocation to Vote Health has indeed increased from NZ$18.2 billion in 2018-19 to $29.6 billion in the 2024-25 budget. Yet for many working in the publicly-funded health system …