DEBATE ENDS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 7, 3 October 1941, Page 8

DEBATE ENDS

Committee Stage Today The debate on the Social Security Amendment Bill was continued yesterday afternoon, and though the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, asked for urgency for the second reading extra time was not needed, the Minister of Health replying at 9.55 p.m. and finishing shortly before 10.30, the normal time for the adjournment. The committee stage will be taken today, when the amendments announced by the Minister will be incorporated in the BiH. „ . “The fee now fixed is a guaranteed, subsidy to the doctor and will give him a better income than before and dispose of his bad debts,” said the Minister of National Service, Mr. Semple. All the Bill aimed at was to see that people who could not afford to pay for medical attention received it. Surely there was nothing wrong with that. Most of tlie protest meetings had been of a political character, said Mr. Semple. At the meeting held in the Wellington Town Hall three of the speakers were National Party candidates, including the mayor of the city, who was a bitter and uncompromising opponent of the present Government and of the previous Government. He was now a candidate of the party which he had attempted to slay a few years ago. All would remember that he went to the country with a new party The Speaker: Order, order! There was not a single clause in the Bill that threatened to interfere with tlie liberty of the doctors, said Mr. Semple. Words such as “coercion, enforced labour, enslavement, regimentation, socialism, communism, terrorism and despotism” had been used about the Bill merely to strike fear into the hearts of the people. Fear of Doctor’s Bill.

One of the gravest factors contributing to ill health in the community was the cost of medical service, said Mr. Frost (Government, New Plymouth). The fear of the doctor's bill was very real to many thousands of people. If there was a section of the people which refused to give social service, it was the State’s responsibility to find and train people who would do so. If the State could interfere with the freedom of the mass of the people as idid by conscription, surely it was justified in interfering witli the freedom of a section of the people. Mr. Frost said that far too much medicine of the patent medicine type was being prescribed -by doctors, and

the cost to the public was not being reduced as it should be. Free Choice of Doctor.

“There is a little apprehension about whether under this Bill a person still has the right to choose his own doctor,” said Mr. Forbes (Opposition, Hurunui). He asked the Minister of Health if he would give an assurance on that point. Mr. Nordmeyer; A patient’s freedom of choice of his doctor is not interfered with in the slightest. Mr. Forbes: Everyone will want to go to the popular doctor, particularly as it will be free of cost. Obviously the busy man will not be able to take ei ery patient who seeks attention. . Mr. Nordmeyer: Apart from this Bill altogether there are some doctors whose services are so much in demand that they cannot possibly take all the patients offering. The Bill cannot possibly overcome that. Mr. Forbes said there was still a strong protest against the principle of the doctors’ fees being fixed by Act of Parliament. The medical profession rightly pointed out that other prices and charges, such as wages, were agreed to or decided by tribunals. The doctors should be given the Tight of recovery of fees by recourse to the courts, as was the privilege of other sections of the community. , A big weakness of the medical scheme was that it made no provision for surgical operations, which were a common feature of medical attention. Possibly the Government felt the cost of including operations requiring anaesthetics was too great.’ Touching on the position of the friendly societies, Mr. Forbes questioned whether the amendment announced by the Minister met their objection that the Bill would destroy them. , Mr. P. O’Brien (Government, Westland) : The societies welcomed the Bill in its original form. Mr. Forbes said that when the Bill was studied in detail the Minister of Health would find that there was cause for alarm on the part of the societiesThe Government should proceed slowly before it did anything harmful to them. Mr. Endean (Opposition, Remuera) congratulated the Prime Minister on the reasonable attitude he had adopted toward the doctors. He wondered, however, why the Government had declined their request for a Royal Commission to devise the best health scheme. He thought the proposition put forward by the doctors to the effect that a tribunal should fix their remuneration and that they should have the right to recover an amount above the fixed fee was reasonable. Mrs. Stewart (Government, Wellington West) said she believed that the fears about the Bill were unfounded, and when the scheme was in operation for a short time they would dissolve. If the doctors entered into the spirit of the legislation, it should be a success. Unfortunately they were controlled by a mercenary few, and it was to be hoped that they would shake off the fetters of the heads of the B.M.A. The specialists were the hindrance, a specialist being a doctor who specialized in larger fees. There was class distinction in the 8.M.A., and also in the Church. The lower ranks of the clergy were too near the working people to oppose humanitarian legislation. Not so were doctors of divinity, deans and arch'deacons. They did not want a socialistic Church, but surely a Christian Church was a socialistic Church. When next they graced the pulpit, they should return to the Sermon on the Mount. Doctors Said to be Misled.

When the doctors went virtually on strike, every newspaper and members of the Opposition supported the doctors, yet they were down on watersiders and miners when they went on strike, said the Minister of Labour, Mr. Webb. Those workers had just as much right as the doctors to determine what they should get for their services. Though they were supporters of the Government, many doctors opposed the Bill on conscientious grounds and they stood by the B.M.A. because they would not be ‘‘scabs.” The goodwill of the medical profession was wanted; the Government did not want to brow- : beat the doctors, who had been misled for political reasons. He suggested that the amendments to the Bill had been brought down to create harmony. The Bill could have been put through in its original form, but it would have caused hard words and feeling. For two or three years, the Press had supported every protest made against this magnificent, humanitarian Bill, while they had unmercifully condemned the miners who wanted a little more consideration for tlie service they rendered to society. With all sincerity he would say that the miners had I greater claim for greater consideration than the doctors. The Press could render a greater service if they appealed to the doctors to co-operate to the fullest extent, instead of aiding and abetting them to disobey the law. If the miners broke the law, they would be put in jail. i Mr. Carr (Government. Auckland ; West) expressed the opinion _ that if • the deciding factor in the merit of the | Bill was to .be the suggestion

introduction would lower the standard of medical service, then it would be necessary to look into the diplomas of some of the doctors. Mr. Carr said he believed that the law should be altered so that the sons and daughters of working people could be enabled to enter the medical profession. “A Better Bill.”

Mr. Harker (Opposition, Waipawa) said that the action of the Government in amending the Bill fully justified the stand made by critics when the measure was first introduced and none of the smoke-screens laid by Ministers and Labour speakers in the House could disguise the fact that the Bill was now better because there were people with courage enough to Come forward and criticize it. Mr. Harker urged the Government to allow a commission to investigate the whole problem of a health service before proceeding with the Bill and also suggested that the friendly societies should be consulted as well as the doctors. Mr. Harker suggested that the Minister of Labour should make a public withdrawal of his remark that the Opposition had endeavoured to foster a doctor’s strike. Mr. Boswell (Government, Bay of Islands) said the scheme gave the doctors a guaranteed price and an assured market for their skill and knowledge. They would be like the farmers, whom no one cpuld say were serfs and coolies.

Mr. Combs (Government, Wellington Suburbs) said the only thing the Government had on its conscience was that it had delayed a little longer than it should have done. Mr. Combs stressed the importance of the Bill from the patients’ point of view, and said that the people’s fears of a penniless old age, unemployment, and mounting expenses caused by illness had all been allayed by the Government’s social legislation.