“Free” Hospitals

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 109, 9 May 1941, Page 6

“Free” Hospitals

It is to be hoped that the statement by the Minister of Health that it should be possible to evolve a more equitable scheme of rating whereby hospitals would be financed on a national and not a local basis is not just wishful thinking. Social security was to have made it a national responsibility, but it did nothing of the sort. When the Bill was produced it merely provided that the Social Security Fund should pay the hospital boards 6s a day for each occupied bed, which was at most only two-fifths of the cost of keeping the patient, without considering the fact that all specialist attention and operations were undertaken by the honorary medical staffs, whom the boards would inevitably have to pay for the service. The Government attempted to silence the protests of the boards by saying that the 6s a day would at least be more than the boards were receiving from patients’ fees. That was true enough, seeing that more than three out of five patients did not pay their bills at all. But there was still no approach to free hospital treatment, though the public had been promised it out of their Social Security tax. Heavy hospital rates continued to be paid in town and country, and these rates have to be increased in some cases by 30 per cent, to carry on no better and perhaps worse than under the old system. The Government’s promise of free hospitals has certainly not been redeemed, and in face of rising costs, great increases in the number of patients treated in the hospital and continuous capital expenditure to provide more accommodation, there is still not a penny more paid out of the Social Security Fund than the bare 6s a day. From this dilemma the Minister cannot extricate the Government by smooth words about the objective of a really free hospital system.