FREE MEDICINE SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25580, 23 August 1948, Page 6

FREE MEDICINE SCHEME

B.M.A. CO OPERATION IN N.Z.

ADDRESS TO AUSTRALIAN DOCTORS (N.Z. Presti Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) PERTH, August 22. Although the primary attitude of the New Zealand branch of. the British Medical Association towards the Dominion’s national medicine scheme was to have nothing to do with it, the association had finally found that it had to co-operate with the Govern.ment, said Dr. E. H. M. Luke, chairman of the New Zealand Council of the 8.M.A., at a special meeting of Western Australian doctors. He added that New Zealand was somewhat of a guinea pig in trying out free medicine. “The method was thrust upon the association, but we found our own standards were tending to depreciate, and decided to sort out some of the mess the politicians had got us into,” he said. “When the scheme was started, some 80,000 people used it. The figure has now dropped to about 15,000.”

A joint committee of the Health Department and the association which had started sitting in 1947 had submitted several proposals to the Government. which it was hoped would be accepted. Dr. Luke’s address was warmly ap?iauded. a In Western Australia, as in he other Australian States, the free medicine scheme has met with the hostility of the profession. Only three doctors in Western Australia subscribe to it.