SPONGING ON HEALTH INSURANCE FUND

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 286, 29 August 1931, Page 23

SPONGING ON HEALTH INSURANCE FUND

JVives Worst Offenders

Six minion women are to be watched very closely by the Ministry w>f Health *hd the Approved Societies to see they , do not exploit the Health Insurance funds by pretending to be lit Hundreds of thousands of them may have their benefit cut off during the year. Doctors are now to examine them with extra care when they turn up at the surgery and ask to be “put on the panel.” Applications they make for i free false teeth or spectacles and other appliances are to be sifted more closely In the future. All this comes about because women have been “sponging” on the Health Insurance Act Large numbers of young married women perfectly fit to perform their domestic duties have been telling their they are suffering from “nervout debility” and similar vague complaints. They have imposed such a drain on the funds that not only certain of their own benefits butthose of the men are in peril.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Arthur Greenwood) has found out that married women are the worst offenders, although the single ones have also been guilty of making excessive claims for benefit. .1 He has ordered his medical experts to weed out the malingerers with all speed, and the Approved Societies and panel doctors and dentists are helping him in the process. He has issued orders, however, that no genuine case is to suffer. The weeding-put of spurious claimants to sick benefit is being applied to men as well, though their increase in claims is nothing like, that. of the women. . Young wives have found that the sickness benefit makes a handy supplement >to their husbands’ wages, and domestic servants—who don’t draw the dole—have in some cases continued to draw such benefit during periods of idleness between one post and another. All this is now to be stopped.