Greetings to all MyHealth / NZHT newsletter subscribers.

NZHT/myHealth Newsletter No 4  - August 2004

Dear Subscribers - please forward this newsletter to as many as you can.

Well, the fight to prevent NZ losing control of its health choices continues.
If you haven't had the time to catch up with what this issue is all about here is a link to a brief overview document setting out a summary of what has happened so far. 
http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/about_docs.html

The government is presently drafting the legislation which will be presented to Parliament at some stage.  As they control the timing of this no-one except them knows exactly when that will be. Regardless of all the work the Government is doing to try and make it look as if the proposed harmonisation with Australia is definitely going to happen, it cannot happen unless approved by a majority of MPs . 

On present numbers there is good reason to think that the Government will not succeed but we must keep the pressure on the various opposition parties over the next few months to make sure no deals are done to get the necessary legislation passed. Never under estimate the force of people power – once the politicians understand the amount of opposition to this proposal we will defeat it .

On the NZ Health Trust website we have created a facility to make it easy for you to email your MP and express your opposition
http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/cgi-bin/massmailerMPs.cgi 

This is how you can stop the products you want to continue to have access to becoming unavailable or dramatically increasing in price.  We want to maintain our unique NZ health product industry & the full and free choice of products we currently enjoy.

WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW

Go to the website;

• contact the MP's (as above)
• tell your friends – the website also includes an easy way to email the message to others you know who may be interested  http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/friend.html

1. Letter of instructions for your staff – click here Retailers Instruction
2. Letter to go on your counter which you can ask your clients to sign expressing their concern at the TGA proposal (you can print as many copies as you like)– click here Public Letter to MPs
3. Petition you & your customers might like to sign for the same reason – click here retailers petition
4. MP list of contact details – click here MPs Contact

Dave Sloan
NZHT