THE B.M.A. GIFT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 10

THE B.M.A. GIFT

TO FIGHT HEALTH SERVICE

SCHEME

DR. MCMILLAN'S REPLY

(By Telegraph—Presa Association.)

DUNEDIN, This Day.

Replying to the Auckland message regarding the B.M.A. gift to fight the health security, plan, Dr. McMillan stated that the message was the usual misrepresentation.; He had never said that the parent body supported a universal scheme, but had claimed that while the doctors in Great Britain had thought the introduction of health insurance there would lower the standard of practice they now admitted that it had raised the standard.

"One is entitled to assume," Dr. McMillan said, "that just as the conscientious objections to the British scheme proved unfounded so similarly doubts and fears that are being expressed by doctors in New. Zealand will prove as groundless as did those expressed by their fellow-practitioners in England. "Sir Henry Brackenbury does not admit that a universal scheme will necessarily lower the standard of practice," said Dr. McMillan. "Doctors in New Zealand are very fond of stating that both Sir Henry and the parent body have expressed opposition to the universal scheme in New Zealand but they have never yet been prepared to state publicly why Sir Henry advised them to oppose a universal scheme in New Zealand. If they did publish the reasons the people of New Zealand would not be very much impressed by them."