On budget night the National Party, caught flat-footed by not having bothered to spend the time preparing an alternative budget, had a sudden rush of poo to the brains and their headline act was to announce they were going to reverse the Government’s cancelling of the $5 co-payment fee for prescriptions.
The National Party says it will repeal the Labour’s removal of a $5 charge on medicine prescriptions if elected.
The scrapping of the $5 cost of prescriptions was one of the major spending initiatives in the Government’s 2023 Budget, published on Thursday, expected to cost $706m for the coming four years.
But it is among the plans most opposed by the Opposition.
National Party finance spokesperson Nicola Willis told Stuff National would return the $5 charge to prescriptions if elected, as it was a “nice to have should not be the priority”.
“I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the fact there are lower-income people for whom I don’t want prescriptions to be a barrier. Well, actually, there are already targetted ways of ensuring they don’t face prescription fees,” she said.
“And you have the Chemist Warehouse offering all prescriptions for free. So, in effect, the Government ends up subsidising that and also subsidising a lot of higher-income people who are perfectly happy to pay that charge.”
Stuff
WTAF?
Does Nicola Willis know that she said the quiet bit out loud?
This is what happens when supposedly bright people are promoted beyond their abilities purely on the basis that they once worked for John Key and have won some debating competitions at university.
What this shows is that they are unable to criticise effectively because, unlike David Seymour, they haven’t done the hard yards of putting out an alternative budget and advocating for a set of policies and a direction of travel.
It’s an institutional failure
They use the mind-numbingly poor excuse that they can’t do an alternative budget because Labour will steal their ideas, while in fact, they don’t ever have an alternative budget because it requires too much hard work.
Consequently, you had Christopher Luxon and Willis herself, standing in a stadium full of their remaining supporters furiously trying to put the poo back in the goose.
National leader Christopher Luxon has clarified his party’s stance on the Government’s decision to abolish the $5 prescription co-payment in Budget 2023.
Following the announcement from the Government on Thursday, National finance spokesperson Nicola Willis was reported as saying her party would repeal the removal of the $5 charge – arguing it was a “nice to have” and it would subsidise wealthy people.
Labour quickly responded with an attack ad, calling National “Budget Day’s Grinch”.
“First instincts tell you a lot about people. For National today it is to make sick Kiwis pay more for medicine.
“The choice this year could not be starker. Forward with Labour or #coalitionofcuts,” senior minister Michael Wood tweeted.
Asked about National’s position, Luxon said the party didn’t support the policy being universal – meaning it applies to everyone.
“I don’t think it makes a lot of sense that someone like me gets the benefit of that,” he said.
However, he said he did see the need for helping those who “most desperately need it”.
“I think targeting it to people with community services cards, for example, targeting to people with super gold cards would actually be the way in which we would go about doing that.”
For people who are “doing it really tough” or “low-income folk and elderly folk”, Luxon said there is a “really good case for actually giving targeted support and certainly making free prescriptions available for them.”
He said: “I think if I can pay, I should pay”.
“I think it’s really unfair, it’s money that’s wasted on being spent on someone like me, for example, who can afford to pay for my prescriptions myself.”
Newshub
By trying to walk it back with the “if I can afford it, I should pay” line, he’s now effectively making the looney left’s argument for a wealth tax for them. He has the political instincts of a rock.
Doing a standup with the backdrop being an empty stadium is symbolically suggesting that nobody wants to listen to him. Good grief. If there’s such a thing as a doom-meister Luxon is it.
I’m starting to think this guy is either a plant, to lose National the election, or French given how much walking backwards he does.
National had better get serious and really fast, or else we are going to have a continuation of the current clown show.
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