PUBLIC HOSPITAL FEES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19396, 3 August 1926, Page 6

PUBLIC HOSPITAL FEES.

PAYMENT A PUBLIC DUTY. REPLY TO RAILWAY DEPARTMENT [by telegraph.—own correspondent.] WELLINGTON, Monday. The executive of the Hospital Boards' Association disagrees with a recently-pub-lished statement by the Railway Department regarding the payment of hospital accounts of the department's employees, and has issued the following statement on the subject:— : "In an official statement the Railway Department is at some pains to combat a suggestion that it should assist any of its employees in the payment of accounts for treatment in public hospitals. It expresses its willingness to assist in any other way but not for the payment of public hospital accounts. While appreciating the department's desire to combat such a suggestion the executive regrets that in doing so the department should lend support to the view that the payment of public hospital accounts is a matter upon which little or no concern should be felt by persons using the hospital. "Unquestionably that, is the impression conveyed by the department when it stresses the fact that the public hospitals are maintained for the most part by direct local taxation and Government subsidies, and asserts that members of the railway service are taxpayers and as such have contributed their fair share toward the maintenance of free public hospitals. "A source of considerable difficulty to hospital boards in the collection of patients' fees is the feeling engendered among certain classes of patients that hospital treatment should be free and hospital accounts need not be paid. The more earnest and self-reliant members of the community recognise their responsibilities and do their utmost to meet them, but there are numbers who regard the deliberate evasion of payment of hospital accounts as' a matter of only slight moment. It is this latter class that the Railway Department's statement is likely to encourage, It is hoped that the department will take early steps to 'repudiate the suggestion that railway employees and others should hot bp actively concerned or exercised regarding any accounts they may owe for treatment in public hospitals."