FEE-FOR-SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 6, 2 October 1941, Page 9

FEE-FOR-SERVICE

Unorthodox Practitioners The view that the fee-for-service scheme was not quite so good as the capitation scheme was expressed by Mr. Anderton (Government, Eden). Mr. Anderton said he 'believed it had been proved that the capitation scheme was the best method by which medical men could bring into being the health service needed by the community. Millions of working hours must be lost each year through preventable sickness, and orthodox doctors would do little in the way of preventive medicine while they received a fee only when the patient was sick. If the fee-for-service principle was accepted, said Mr. Anderton, he could not see why unorthodox practitioners, such as osteopaths and nature healers, should not have the right to receive payment from the Social Security Fund if individuals wanted to consult them. Mr. Polson (Opposition, Stratford): Would you Include chiropodists? Mr. Anderton: Certainly, if they are capable of doing the work, The community was paying the bill, he added, and people were entitled to choose their own form of treatment. Provided the treatment was accepted in a world-wide sense, . practitioners should be entitled to fee-for-service. Christian Scientists and others never visited an orthodox doctor, but they had their own practitioners.