Dr Williams blames fee rise issue on Minister

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 1

Dr Williams blames fee rise issue on Minister

Repeated attacks on doctors from the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm, are only inflaming the issue of medical fee increases, says the president of the New Zealand Medical Association, Dr Dean Williams. Doctors were becoming angry at the Ministerial display of what amounted to “unreasonable irritability,” Dr Williams said yesterday. “I am going round the country trying to quieten the whole issue and Mr Malcolm appears to be inflaming it,” he said in Morrinsville yesterday.

The Medical Association had reluctantly accepted the Government directive limiting doctors’ fee increases to $1 and if left alone, there was every chance the situation would revert to normal. “But the more this nonsense goes on, the more resentment and anger might be kindled. “I think that would be unfortunate for patients, doctors and the Government,” he said.

Mr Malcolm was reported yesterday as saying that doctors’ spokesmen were conducting “a rather hysterical media campaign.”

Earlier in the week he described as “attempted blackmail” a statement by 10 South Canterbury doctors who said they might have to consider waiving fewer fees for hardship cases. Mr Malcolm warned doctors that the Government might reconsider all support for medical practices.

Dr Williams said that if 10 doctors in a town the size of Timaru could attract such an angry response, it showed that the Government was insecure.

He doubted if many doctors would reduce or stop the traditional discounts they gave to pensioners, the unemployed and other hardship cases. “We know the patients, and we know they cannot afford it,” he said.

Doctors were aware of their responsibilities. He had talked to 200 Auckland doctors on Wednesday evening who, although dismayed at Mr Malcolm’s comments, had backed the Medical Association’s stand in accepting the Government directive.

The president of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, Dr Selwyn Carson, said most doctors had tried to limit their fee increases before the Government directive. It was a “political red herring” to divert attention from the Government’s own inadequacies. “What worries me is that they seem to have no plans at all for the future,” said the Christchurch doctor. • The chairman of the General Practitioners’ Society, Dr Roger Ridley-Smith, said that Mr Malcolm’s threats were “complete eyewash,” and he criticised Mr Malcolm for a “crude kind of public relations expertise and an abysmal ignorance of general practice.”