Andrew HouA Dunedin pharmacist has raised concerns about the ‘‘enshittification’’ of New Zealand’s healthcare system, which is slowly dissolving services to people and increasingly serving ‘‘scale, profit and efficiency’’ instead. After researching the term online, he discovered it accurately described what was happening to New Zealand’s healthcare system. ‘‘And if a person has a heart attack and dies, who’s liable for that?’’In a worst-case scenario, he said the health system could decay to a point where it was not functional any more, or patients would just start dying because they were not being seen enough. ‘‘The only way to ‘un-enshittificate’ our healthcare system is for New Zealand to just look after its healthcare system — we need to fund it appropriately and look after it. ‘‘The whole health budget and decision-making needs to be ring-fenced so it doesn’t change every three years.’’john.lewis@odt.co.nz

Source: Otago Daily Times January 29, 2026 21:34 UTC