HEALTH INSURANCE

Grey River Argus, 9 August 1937, Page 3

HEALTH INSURANCE

Government Scheme REPLY TO CRITIC. WELLINGTON, August 8. “In his address to the Hastings Rotary Club. Dr. Cashmore complains that the Government’s Health Insurance Scheme will react to the detriment of the standard of medical practice in New Zealand,” said Dr. D. G. McMillan, M.P., Chairman of the National Health Insurance Committee, when interviewed to-day. "Doctor Cashmore’s statement seems to indicate that medical men are Tnore devoted to their fee than to the science of medicine. I cannot accept such a low estimation of the medical profession in this country.” HASTINGS, August 6. Though the medical profession favoured a health insurance scheme covering some sections of the community it did not approve the system now proposed by the Government and it saw no reason for taxing every member of the community to pay for such a scheme, said Dr. R. Cashmore, chairman of the Hastings branch of the British Medical Association, to the Hastings Rotary Club this afternoon. . x Most doctors were against the proposed scheme, he said, and ' many would leave the country rather than work under it, although they would o-et more money from it than they were now receiving. It was. not any financial consideration which was influencing them. They were acting in the interests of the health of the country. Under the scheme doctors would become too busy to give individual patients the attention they deserved, and the elimination of competition would remove the incentive to study and to undertake constant research. The Government was making a beginning by socialising the doctors, because they were the smallest body in the country and their votes counted for nothing.