PAPER "BENEFITS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 51, 1 March 1941, Page 8

PAPER "BENEFITS."

Notices in the "Gazette" are supposed to have the force of law, but the notice published on Thursday night is a conspicuous and farcical exception. It says that medical benefits in accordance with the Social Security Act will >be available throughout New Zealand, on and after to-day. Candour should have impelled the Minister of Health, who signed the notice, to add, ". . . if the medical profession provides them." As it stands, the notice is untrue, and the Government which authoi-ised it had no ground for assurance that it would be true. The refusal of the B.M.A. to provide the benefits was a notorious fact of long standing, and every utterance of the association's spokesman before the gazette notice appeared reiterated the refusal. Yesterday the association's president declared that the doctors would do "nothing at all" to give effect to the scheme and would have nothing , to do with it. It is not to the credit of either party to the dispute that it should have been allowed to reach this impasse. Again it must be urged that a straight conflict between the Government and the B.M.A. involves the grave risk of one of two consequences—either the Government will use its powers to coerce the B.M.A. or it will be obliged to confess itself defeated, by a minority of the people. Both possibilities are undesirable and dangerous, and the sequel to neither will be a better medical service. A majority of the people voted for a better medical service; and all income-receivers are paying for it. Moreover, not only the Government but the B.M.A. has declared the need of it. The only reasonable course for them is to agree as to the terms upon which it can be provided. |