LIMITED SCOPE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1944, Page 3

LIMITED SCOPE

SOCIAL SECURITY

A DOCTOR'S COMMENT

Failure on the part of the Government to bring within the scope of the social security scheme the provision of free vaccines and electro-therapy services was the subject of adverse comment by a New Plymouth medical practitioner. The reported intention of the-Government to enlarge the list of free drugs and medicines was characterised by him as a tendency to disregard methods of treatment other than administering medicines through the stomach.

Increasingly medical practice leaned towards the use of vaccines that could produce the same effect in a remarkably shorter time, he said. The most outstanding evidence of this was the recent treatment of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, -Mr. Winston Churchill. Special preparations' in a highly-concentrated form were used in his case with outstanding results. s A simple illustration was a comparison in the correction of blood conditions. Many people suffei*ed from time to time with recurrent boils, and the swallowing of medicine—free under the social security scheme—was the longest way of procuring a cure. It was costly, too, for a large number of repeats could easily run into a large amount. By contrast the injection of a vaccine quickly effected a return to normal and reduced the period of suffering. MARKED EFFECTS. Electro-therapy, the use of infra-red and violet rays, was also a system that had not been recognised under the free medicine scheme. Results being obtained every day confirmed doctors in the opinion that the prescription of medicines under the social security scheme, while giving the patient a free service, conferred no benefits. When a change was made to the use of electro-therapy the, effect was so marked that treatment achieved the desired result in what seemed a surprisingly short time. However, both these methods involved more initial expense than the simple use of drugs through the stomach, and in the case of electrical healing the doctor had to Watch carefully while the patient was being treated. The patient could not be handed over to an operator to whom the doctor could give a series of instructions. That might be possible in the case of massage, but in the great majority of cases the physician, particularly the specialist, was compelled to give the closest supervision. One aspect of this1 was that a number of practitioners had decided to pay the cost of the operation of violetray machines themselves rather than deny the patients the benefit of the treatment. If, however, they had prescribed drugs under the social security system there would be no cost to the doctor and the patient would have to follow the slow road to health, sometimes with little prospect of success. LONG-RUN COSTS. At present consultants' fees were not covered by the amount of 7s 6d that the public was able to recover from the social security fund, the doctor said, and the same practice appeared to have grown up in connection with the administration of drugs in any way other than through the mouth and with other specialised forms of treatment. There was.no reason why the patient should be made to pay simply because his medical adviser considered he should receive treatment that was. not included in the social security list. In the long run the cost to the fund might well be considerably lower and the patient cured in far shorter time or given real benefit when the older formulas had been outmoded by new methods , not yet covered by the scheme.

A doctor, he added, should be free to choose what would do the most good, without the thought at the back of his mind that the person might be called upon to meet the expense himself if instructed to use something not provided for under social security. The injection for pneumonia that had saved the life of Mr. Churchill would have to be paid for by a New Zealander.; That did not seem right. Frequently a prolonged treatment! with a tonic was no more effective than.two or three injections, and perhaps not even as good, and yet the bias was towards the tonic simply because it was free. Under conditions such as he had outlined, the doctor said he felt that progress, which should always be the keynote of medicine*, was likely to be hampered by a scheme that had brought in its train an undesirable tendency to rely on out-of-date methods out of deference for the fact that patients would not be called upon to meet the cost. The public subscribed a large amount to the social security fund and were entitled to the best, which might in many cases prove to be the cheapest in the long run.