WAS TOO COSTLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 62, 15 March 1939, Page 7

WAS TOO COSTLY.

NATIONAL INSURANCE.

MOVEMENT IN AUSTRALIA.

The belief that Australia will eventually divorce the medical service proposals'.'of the national insurance scheme from the pensions aspect was expressed yesterday by Dr. Frank Macky, of Auckland, who returned by the Awatea after a visit to the Commonwealth. Opinion in Austraba was turning that way, he said, and it was also believed that when the health scheme there was got under way it would be an even more limited scheme than was intended in the original proposals. "The insurance scheme hae been more or less shelved at present," he said, but that move is due to political action rather than to any endeavour on the part of the profession.. It has been recognised that there is a scarcity of money, and the scheme has been held up on the ground of expense. It was known in Australia that it was going to cost too much money even for a scheme that was definitely limited as to the class of people who would benefit." , , . Aeked regarding the effect that the big. armament expenditure in Australia had in the hold-up of the proposed scheme,' Dr. Macky said that that was partly the reason, but it was felt that the Treasurer had merely found that expenditure a "good excuse" for dropping the proposed scheme, which wouldjhave been too expensive even without-that. Dr. Macky liae been away from Auckland for a fortnight establishing his son in a medical college in Sydney.