11328 (2024). Hon Barbara Edmonds to the Minister of Finance

11328 (2024). Hon Barbara Edmonds to the Minister of Finance: What is the population growth used for projecting future health spending?

Hon Nicola Willis: Health cost pressure funding will be announced on Budget Day and the underpinning advice will be subject to the Budget 2024 proactive release shortly after. Decisions on health cost pressures in Budget 2024 have been informed by both: • a top-down funding model that was used to set cost pressure planning parameters for Health New Zealand in March 2023. The planning parameters factored in demographic and inflation (including wage inflation) assumptions. The planning parameters were disclosed in Treasury’s 2023 Economic and Fiscal Updates. • bottom-up planning and budgeting by Health New Zealand. The Treasury produces a Long-term Fiscal Statement every four years. This statement projects future spending in different sectors including health. The assumptions used for these projections, including for population growth can be found in Treasury's paper "Background Paper for the 2021 Statement on the Long-term Fiscal Position: Demographic, Economic and Fiscal Assumptions and Logic in the 2021 Long-term Fiscal Model".