MEDICAL FEES

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24070, 15 September 1941, Page 6

MEDICAL FEES

The legislation now before Parliament designed to provide general practitioner service under the Social Security scheme stipulates in precise terms the fees a doctor is to be paid for each consultation. It also lays it down that he may be paid nothing more. As originally drafted the bill stated that the amounts received by a general practitioner for the services he provided must be accepted in full satisfaction of all claims in respect of them. It added that, except in certain circumstances not likely to arise, no doctor could demand or sue for fees which could be claimed from the Social Security Fund. The Public Health Committee has amended these provisions to read: "No medical practitioner shall demand, or accept, or be entitled to recover" any fees from a patient when he is entitled to be paid from the fund. The words "or accept" are new. Thus the patient is now bound by the Act, as well as the doctor. If he proposes to ignore the law and pay his doctor, the money may not be accepted. This is in sharp contrast to the regulations governing hospital and maternity For treatment in an approved private hospital, the fund provides the same amount as in case of a public hospital, but the regulation says this shall be "in partial satisfaction" of the claim the licensed proprietor has against the patient. Under the maternity regulations payments made from the fund to a private maternity hospital may be in full or partial satisfaction of the amount charged the patient. A doctor attending a maternity case may charge the patient an additional fee if lie is a recognised obstetrical specialist and notifies the patient of the fact. Thus with the general practitioner service there come new and rigid shackles, binding both doctor and patient.