HOSPITALS AND LOTTERIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23685, 17 December 1938, Page 14

HOSPITALS AND LOTTERIES

As a whole the Otago Hospital Board did not accord much sympathy to the suggestion of one of its members at its meeting this week that it should support the idea of urging the Government to authorise State lotteries, of which the profits would be devoted to hospitals throughout the Dominion. The attitude which it adopted is to be commended. The idea of a lottery, suggestive of easy money, may have surface attractions, and precedent can, of course, be cited for the employment of it for the benefit of hospital maintenance. But the arguments against it carry substantial weight. As has been pointed out, the administrative expenses in connection with these lotteries are very heavy, and the net allocations would be liable to be seriously overestimated. On the other hand, whether it is desirable that hospital maintenance should be dependent even in part upon the proceeds of a lottery is to be gravely doubted. The material and ethical aspects of the question can scarcely be altogether separated. Where hospitals are dependent for their resources upon voluntary public subscription, the effect of the establishment of lotteries for their assistance must be to dfy up the very sources from which they have been accustomed to derive, their revenue, and once that happens it must be very difficult to re-establish them, should that be wished, on the former footing. This argument may not apply very strongly in the case of New Zealand, where the establishment and upkeep of hospitals are a direct charge on the ratepayer and taxpayer. But it need not be imagined that even here,- were lotteries conducted in the interests of the hospitals, the tendency would not be to discourage the contributions and benefactions which in existing circumstances these institutions may always hope to receive from private sources. Apart from that, the hospital system in New Zealand is identified to an important extent with the State, and it would be repugnant to the tradition of State administration that there should be reliance upon such adventitious aids as lotteries for a proportion of the cost of hospital maintenance. The New Zealand Hospital Boards' Association has rejected in the past proposals similar to that which was brought before the Otago Board on Thursday night, and it can have discovered no reason to revise its view that the lottery system is best left out of its calculations.