Public, private healthcare divide decides brothers’ fate after cancer diagnosis

Prostate Cancer

As we all know there thousands of reasons for taking out private health insurance. And here is another reason. This is a headline taken from an article on the NZ Herald:

Public, private healthcare divide decides brothers’ fate after cancer diagnosis

The story is about 2 brothers who are both diagnosed with prostate cancer. Mike has health insurance and Stephen doesn’t.

Stephen was diagnosed in September 2016 and despite being classed as urgent he had to wait 10 months for surgery. While he waited his entire prostate was replaced with tumour. The cancer then spread to his liver and lungs, and he now has a tumour at the base of his brain. Going private would have cost $40k which he didn’t have.

Mike was diagnosed in Dec 2010 – he had surgery 3 months later (which included a month long delay due to the Christchurch earthquake). Surgery was a success, and he has been cancer free for 12 years.

A quote from Mike says it all “I cannot believe I can be treated the way I was in private and Stephen can treated the way he was in public, yet we’re led to believe we have a good first-world health system in New Zealand – it seems more like a Third World one to me”

Enough said.

Click here for the article.

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