Women oppose health insurance

Press, 3 February 1983, Page 4

Women oppose health insurance

Wellington reporter

Women Against the Cuts, a pressure group opposed to reductions in spending on Government services, is angry about posters displayed in doctors' waiting rooms a'dvising patients to take out private health insurance.

In the posters, the General Practitioners' Society says its advice results from the Government's refusal to increase payments to doctors through the general medical services benefit.

The society's action “smacked of blatant selfinterest,” said the group. Doctors were obviously worried that people were going to them less often because they could not afford the fees, it said.

Private health insurance would not resolve that problem in a way beneficial to patients, because those who could not afford doctors’ bills certainly could not afford private insurance as well.

Also, the elderly and chronically sick were not eligible for such insurance. Women Against the Cuts believed that increased use of private health insurance actually increased the costs of health services. Increased costs would arise out of the added administrative procedures of health insurance schemes.

Further growth of private health insurance would ensure that inequalities in the health-care system were made worse rather than better, the group said.