‘Critical Stage’ In Social Security Medicine

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 September 1950, Page 8

‘Critical Stage’ In Social Security Medicine

WELLINGTON, This Day (0.C.). —The present system of social medicine in New Zealand will have to be considerably modified or replaced by a more readily controllable procedure, unless the recently introduced reforms provide satisfactory remedies. This assessment of medical services provided under social security is given by Dr Duncan Cook, Director of the Division of Clinical Services, in the annual report of the Health Department, tabled in the House of Representatives yesterday. “A critical stage has been reached in the development of social security medicine,” says Dr Cook. “In creases in the cost of general medical services and pharmaceutical supplies have been of such magnitude as to lead to serious misgivings whether State medical insurance against sickness is practicable, or whether the best method of payment has been adopted.” Dr Cook says that the method of paying doctors should neither encourage quantity rather than quality of service; nor encourage people to make unnecessary demands on practitioners. He continues: “Private insurance companies in the past have experienced the same phenomenon with accident and sickness policies. They have protected themselves against financial loss by the limitation of policies, both as to the nature of the illness and its duration.”General medical services in 1949-50 cost £2,328,154. Dr Cook says this represented 6,208,410 individual services by doctors to fewer than 2,000,000 persons, or an average of more than three attendances a head of the population.

Pharmaceutical services cost £2,043,843, an increase of £250,684 over the previous year. For this sum 7,240,000 prescriptions were dispensed, at an average cost of 5s which amounted to approximately 21s a head of the population. Many factors have caused the rise in the cost of pharmaceutical supplies. During the last 10 years, many new drugs which are extremely costly have been introduced, to the great benefit of the community. Without social security most people would not have been able to pay for these expensive items. The report says that a reasonable increase in the amount and costs of medical and pharmaceutical services was to be expected with the development of the social security system, as there is no doubt that many people did not receive sufficient medical services, and were unable to pay for needed medicines in the days before 1938.