[duane1x]

Thanks for the replies. Not dissimilar to the States, where you can go to get care at a clinic if you cannot afford to pay, you will wait a long time, be seen by busy staff, and possibly not get the best treatment.

Though I'm sure the NZ system is better in terms of the base level of service offered. If for no other reason that the government acknowledges the need and attempts to meet it, albeit less than 100% from the sounds of things.

But opting to carry your own private insurance seems like a move toward a 2-tier system. And I wonder how that reconciles out. If you have a public health system set up to handle people in one way, and then you have another set of people placing demands on that same system through the leverage of their private contracts. That is, unless there is a completely separate system of labs and equipment, MRI machines, technicians and so forth. The whole infrastructure duplicated. Otherwise the people with the private insurance are stepping on the people coming in through the public system, by definition, if they are somehow able to jump the queue and get better, faster treatment.

Seems a slippery slope, no?