Talks today on doctors’ fee rises

Press, 1 May 1984, Page 3

Talks today on doctors’ fee rises

PA Hamilton The Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm, has called on the New Zealand Medical Association chairman, Dr Dean Williams, to meet him in Wellington today to discuss “greedy” fee increases by some doctors. “You could say he has been summoned,” said Mr Malcolm who at the weekend threatened to control doctor’s fee increases by regulation. Dr Williams said yesterday the message received at the association’s office in Wellington was in the nature of a request to attend a meeting. “I won’t respond to a summons, but I will comply with a request,” Dr Williams said. On Saturday Mr Malcolm told a pharmacists’ conference in Nelson that some greedy doctors were charging an extra $8 a half-hour while wage and salary earners were getting an extra ?8 a week after the wage and price freeze. “Clearly that is just not on,” Mr Malcolm said. “We have all benefited greatly from a control of inflation and a reduction of interest rates, and the Government is not going to allow one interest group to gain an advantage at the expense of others.” Dr Williams said the Trade and Industry Department had reported that 80 per cent of doctors had put fees up — “it may well be proper that 100 per cent should have increased their fees.” After the freeze doctors were entitled to increase charges to cover increased costs and later staff wage increases. “There were no guidelines to doctors when the freeze came off. We asked doctors to exercise responsible restraint. The Government’s guideline didn’t come until more than a month later with the $B-a-week wage increase.” Dr Williams said the Trade and Industry Department had the mechanism to deal with increases it considered unreasonable. “Why don’t they just get on and use it.” By world standards medical fees in New Zealand were extraordinarily cheap, he said. Mr Malcolm said yesterday there was very clear evidence that doctors seemed to be acting more selfishly than any other group.

“I am still at the point of saying to doctors very clearly: ‘You are pushing me into a comer in which I am going to have no option, in the interests of the patient who I represent, other than to come down on you very heavily,’ he said. “I don’t want to do that. I would far prefer it if they could show some common sense in the matter and not push me into that comer.” Labour’s health spokesman, Dr Michael Bassett, yesterday called on the Goverment to raise the general medical services benefit immediately. He said nothing useful would come of today’s meeting unless the question of a rise in the G.M.S. benefit was part of the agenda. A Trade and Industry Department survey of 109 doctors in the Wellington area showed that more than 80 per cent of them had increased their fees.