HEALTH SERVICE IN AUSTRALIA

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22826, 22 December 1948, Page 4

HEALTH SERVICE IN AUSTRALIA

ACCORDING to the latest information from across the Tasman, the doctors of Australia are adamant in their opposition to any national health scheme which is controlled departmentally. Although the Australian scheme is not without commendable features—these were duly recognised by the profession when efforts were being made to attain an element of compromise—the form of control chosen has met with strong objections. Direction of the service by a corporation was considered but was eventually rejected in favour of departmental control, tempered only by the association of advisory committees with the various official directorates.

Authority is given to the Government to do a vast number of things, including, if necessary, even the manufacture of medical and dental supplies. Prom all accounts, the Director-General of Health could become very much of an autocrat and could go to the length of deciding which doctors and dentists shall be recognised as specialists. But behind or over him will stand the Minister, to whose directions he will be subject “in the exercise of any power or function.”

Ministerial responsibility for broad policy is no doubt one of the necessities of any State service. Obviously, however, the doctors of Australia see in the scheme put before them limitless scope for political manipulation and meddling and the gradual disappearance of a personal freedom which, in the eyes of many, compensates for the arduous and heavily responsible nature of the work. With little or no representation in control, the profession secs the building up of a huge bureaucracy leading to the gradual supersession of private practice.

The better features of the plan include provision for enabling the Commonwealth to enlarge the field of training and research and to ensure that adequate medical and dental services are available to all. Properly operated, it could give ample scope for the private practitioner and help to raise general standards of public health. Tt is considered, also, that the system of only half-free medical benefits of various kinds will prevent abuses and waste. But plainly the Government has still to appreciate the need for enlisting the doctors’ co-operation, particularly by removing the threat of regimentation.