SOCIAL SECURITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 285, 2 December 1938, Page 8

SOCIAL SECURITY.

Mr. Savage has given categorical assurances that the Social Security Act will begin to function on its due date, but so far as the pnblie is aware, no effort is being made to come to an arrangement with the doctors under-which the medical benefits will be made available to the people in the form desired —a form under which each taxpayer will be able to secure the services of the practitioner on whose panel he desires to be placed. Negotiations between the Government and the Medical Association were broken off long before the Act was passed. It is not sufficient now to say that " the doctors will come in or be left out in the cold," or, on the other hand, for a medical man of the standing of Sir James Elliott to indicate that all young doctors are disturbed over their prospects and that some are not going to continue in New Zealand if they find that changed conditions give them less freedom than elsewhere. The younger doctors are not without duty to a country which has, in effect, subsidised their education. The Act has been passed and has received the approval of the country at the last general election. Nobody wants to see the medical profession dragooned into an unwilling acceptance jf a plan which is of such pevsonal importance to the whole community, and it is to be hoped that an earnest effort will be made to reconcile differences anil to assure the public that they will get a service for which they are compelled to pay.