This is a direct result of under-funding the health service in order to trash it to make NZ more amenable to privatisation of health.
Yes, National did increase the allocation in the current budget but using Treasury's numbers instead of Health's resulted in a 3% decrease in funding per head of population.
Underfunding like that when we have an aging population is immensely stupid, but the wealthier, older white people will be ok, its the poor, working class that are going to suffer.
Thats been my thinking too. Degrade gov services so they struggle to provide what they're meant to and the public blames the service itself, with the reactionary result being to defund further. ‘Drain the swamp’. No good will come from this and it will affect all parts of society including the wealthy - their wealth is built on the backs of the rest of us. Typical short term selfish thinking. But yes , the less advantaged will suffer first and these pricks will ignore with glee , or blame them for not ‘helping themselves like I did’.
That's the magic of neo-liberal economic theory. Its not just pretending that humans are rational actors; its a pretense that almost assumes that all the current humans and their future offspring can just not exist. The same thinking is behind the AI will replace my workers brain-rot.
You can't just take healthcare away, same as you can't just take jobs away. You still have a bunch of people who need healthcare, and need work.