Budget 2020: SuperGold cardholders get free health/eye check-ups
NZ Herald, May 2020
In the budget announced by Hon Grant Robertson in May SuperGold cardholders will get a free annual health and eye check-up as part of health spending that mostly goes to District Health Boards that are tackling huge treatment backlogs caused by the Covid-19 lockdown.
New funding has been earmarked to roll-out a promised free annual health check-up for the country's more than 750,000 SuperGold cardholders, including an eye check (policy that was included in the New Zealand First-Labour Coalition agreement).
That will cost nearly $13m in 2020/21, rising to an estimated $61.6m a year from 2021/22. No start date has been determined, and the checks may not be available until next year.
This is great news for seniors.
Awareness and early detection lead to the correct advice being given and relevant treatment being implemented. These are the vital steps for saving sight.
Time lost is vision lost
The key to the policy’s success is to have a sufficiently comprehensive eye check to pick up conditions such as macular degeneration. Macular Degeneration NZ is working closely with other eye organisations through the “Eye Health Aotearoa”. As a group we are calling on Ministry of Health officials to work together with all eye health organisations to determine what will be included in the ‘eye health check’. We want to ensure the policy to be implemented in a way that will save sight for people over the age of 65.
