NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22121, 17 June 1937, Page 10

NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE

TO TUB F.DITOB OF THE PHBSS Sir, —Friendly exception must be taken to the statement made by the Acting-Prim* Minister that "We have been engaged for months now in examin'ng all aspects of health insurance." On the contrary, in November last, representations were mad° to the Government, and to the National Health Insurance Committee by a body of scientists, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and other social workers to the effect that the best form of health insurance is the actual nrevention of ill-health. No oral evidence having been requested from the eminent men and women attached to the movement which made the representations on their behalf, it becomes apparent that the National Health Insurance Committee is not concerned to take into consideration the most significant form of health insurance in existence. Unlike the corrsnittee, the Government and the municipal authorities, however, the people of New Zealand are not prepared to contemplate in any complacent spirit the present alarming growth of physical and mental disability, together with mounting costs of hospitals, asylums and medical services.

The members of the Government, as well as of the municipal administrations and of the National Health Insurance Committee are decidedly out of touch with public opinion on health questions. The conviction of the people is overwhelmingly on the side of that form of health insurance which consists of prevention. In 1935, recommendations were made by the League of Nations to the governments of the world that national inquiries into the nutritional habits of their peoples would undoubtedly result in a great lessening of all forms of illhealth, both physical and mental. The reputation of New Zealand for endeavouring to be somewhere in the van of all social progress is now endangered by the tendency of the Government to lag behind the enlightened views of the people. Britain, Japan, India. Czechoslovakia and other countries are already engaged in bringing about among their peoples that reform which competent authorities have termed "the greatest social reform of the century." The medical profession of New Zealand is also very much behind in mat*ers of prevention of physical and mental ill-health. The British Medical Research Council has already carried out detailed investigations into the dietaries of the people, with a view to the nutritional prevention of 111hoalth, the arresting of epidemics and the reduction of maternal mortality. The doctors of New Zealand are sti' concerned with the technical side of affairs. It is certainly time for public opinion to make an unmistakable protest against the assumption that the people of New Zealand are concurring I in the attitude of the Government, the National Health Insurance Committee and the medical profession that the provision of medical services is the principal objective of the National Health Insurance measure. —Yours, etc SILENT PETER. Onehunga, June 14, 1937.