Government promises to fund Plunket line - then ditches it

Plunket line will be history come 30 June.The Government wants to rid Plunket of it, despite campaigning in 1999 that the service will be funded through Plunket. Here's what Prime Minister had to say while in opposition.

"We will move to fund the Plunket line for 24 hour coverage," - Helen Clark (November 1999) Speech to Wellington Campaign Rally.

"The reasons why the Government and its many health bureaucracies won’t fund Plunketline go beyond mere pennypinching," - Helen Clark (March 1995) Speech to Royal NZ Plunket Society’s 52nd National Conference.

"I want to make a special plea for government funding of Plunket line. It was Labour’s policy to fund it because we have been very impressed by the service. With more funding to operate more lines with more nurses, it could have been even better." Helen Clark (April 1997) Speech to Royal New Zealand Plunket Society.

Heres how the Government got rid of it and reneged on that promise.

Plunket line was receiving $1 million of taxpayer funding. Most calls were going unanswered because more tax paper funds were needed to keep up with demand. With more funding, it could have been better, Miss Clark initially said.

Instead of boosting Plunket line by $2 million, the Government chose to boost the Ministry of Health's Healthline funding by $2 million and merge the two services.

Back in 2003, the Ministry of Health sought tenders for the provision of a national Healthline service. The tender requested that the national Healthline service provider include the provision of advice on Well Child and parent support, a service that had been provided by Plunket.

McKesson New Zealand and The Royal New Zealand Plunket Society put in a joint proposal which was accepted by the Ministry of Health. This meant the Plunket line was operated by Plunket on subcontract to McKesson.

Yet with triple the funds of Plunket line, up to 90 percent of calls were not being answered due to technical problems with the service - perhaps because the $2 milion extra fuding didn't go into the Plunketline operation. Plunket line was set up to fail.

Now Plunket has been removed from providing the service as McKesson is to take over the "Well Child" service, which was the plan all along. Nobody told parents of preschoolers that.

There is absolutely no guarantee that the service will match the Plunket service.

Yet at the time of the 1999 election Helen Clark and Annette King launched a petition to fully fund a 24-hour helpline through Plunket. They pledged that once in office they would ensure Plunket line never closed due to lack of funding.

They didn't say that they intended to divert the funding elsewhere and leave Plunket out of the picture.

It is not forgotten that the merger between Health line and Plunket line was announded on a Friday at the beginning of a Parliamentary recess - identical to the timing of the announcement of Plunket line's demise.