FAMILY BENEFITS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 143, 13 December 1940, Page 9

FAMILY BENEFITS

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES REPLY BY MINISTER (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. The statement issued yesterday by the Dominion Council of the Friendly Societies in Wellington was described today by the Minister of Health (Mr. Armstrong) as "foolish and untrue." The statement contained in the Press Association message referred to a statement allegedly made in the House of Representatives recently by the Minister on the question of medical benefits under the Social Security Act. The council said the statement was apt to convey the impression that only the head of a friendly society member's family received medical benefits, but the council desired to make it clear that not only, the member himself but his wife and children received medical benefits.

"I do not know where they managed to get that peculiar statement from," said Mr. Armstrong. "Certainly not from any statement made by me, either inside or outside Parliament. In explaining the difference between friendly societies' benefits and social security proposals I did explain that whereas contributions paid for medical benefits through friendly societies by heads of families covered the whole family we would pay a contribution to the doctor for each member of the family under sixteen years. I have been a< member of the Manchester Unity of the 1.0.0. F. for 43 years and am the father of a family, so I ought to be conversant with what the position is. I cannot imagine the Dominion Council of the friendly societies giving out for publication such a statement, which is calculated to injure the prestige of the Minister, whose only object is to do something of lasting good for ,the masses, including members of friendly societies."