SOCIAL SECURITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 301, 1 October 1938, Page 2

SOCIAL SECURITY.

THE DOCTORS’ CAMPAIGN. / FINANCIAL AID FROM BRITAIN. (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 30. Advice has been received in Auckland that the British Medical Association has sent from England a gift of £SOO to the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, to be applied in the branch’s campaign against the Government’s free medical scheme in the Social Security Act. “The gift rather disposes of' the claim by Dr. D. G. McMillan, member of Parliament for Dunedin AVest, that the British Medical Association favours a universal scheme of free medical attention,” said a prominent member of the Auckland division of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association. “It’s action sufficiently shows its opposition to the principle.” MR MCMILLAN’S REJOINDER. . THE POSITION MISREPRESENTED. DUNEDIN, This Day. Replying to an Auckland message in regard to the British Medical Association’s gift to fight the health security plan, Dir. McMillan stated that the message was the usual misrepresentation. He had never said the patent body supported a universal scheme, but had claimed, that while doctors in Great Britain had thought the introduction of health insurance there would lower the standard of practice, they now admitted that it hail raised the standard. “One is entitled to assume,” Dr. McMillan said, “that just as conscientious objections to the British scheme proved unfounded, so similarly doubts and fears that are being expressed by doctors in New Zealand will prove as groundless as did those expressed by their fellow-practitioners in England.” Dr. McMillan added: “Sir Henry Brackenbury does not admit that a universal scheme will necessarily lower the standard of practice. The doctors in New Zealand are very fond of stating that both Sir Henry and. the parent body have expressed opposition to a universal scheme in New Zealand, but they have never yet been prepared to state publicly why Sir Henry advised them to oppose a universal scheme in New Zealand. If they did publish the reasons the people of New Zealand would not bo very much impressed by them.”