THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, May 16, 1939. THE ONUS OF BLUNDERING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23809, 16 May 1939, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, May 16, 1939. THE ONUS OF BLUNDERING

The Minister of Health is perhaps entitled to a little sympathy in the position in which he finds himself i” respect of the impasse that has been reached in regard to the provision of maternity benefits under the Social Security Act, and in the necessity imposed upon him of presenting the Government’s case to the best of his ability. Mr Fraser is unfortunately placed in that he has to argue which he is certainly doing with considerable energy, from premises that are unsound. In effect he declares and reiterates that, the Government having taken steps to provide the machinery for its maternity benefit scheme, the doctors are to blame because they do not come into the place which is reserved for them as participants in its operation. These reiterations that “ the Government has done its part ” may sound very well to members of trade uniong which would rebuke the doctors for what they suggest is their contumacy, but are in reality very weak. They cannot obscure the fact that the Government, not the medical profession, has created a position in respect of which the Minister, not altogether surprisingly, seems to be waxing irritable. For the Government is clearly endeavouring to put into operation a plan for which it had not made the necessary arrangements beforehand, and it has, of course, acted in full cognisance of this fact, buoyed up presumably by some pious hope that an eleventh hour miracle of settlement between itself and the medical profession would save it from the consequences of its own rashness. The miracle has not happened, muddledom is an inevitable result, and the Ministerial effort is to make it appear that the doctors are at fault as obstructionists, though for evidence to the contrary there is the Social Security Act itself which makes plain that the operation of the Government’s plan must depend upon agreement between itself and the medical practitioners. The attitude of the medical profession has been known all along, and for its attempt to advance without reaching such an agreement the Government must accept full responsibility. Attempts to put the medical profession in the wrong merely deny it a right of decision respecting co-operation in the scheme already conceded it. The tale of controversy is indeed becoming tedious. The dilemrfia in which the Government has placed itself is, of course, that if it cannot compose its differences with the B.M.A. it must sooner or later be faced with having to admit that it has attempted something which is impracticable. In its ideas of establishing a new social order in the community it has paid but too little heed to the danger of attempting a sudden remoulding of established features of the life of the community and the relationships subsisting within it. It professes to understand better than the medical profession the basis upon which the best possible health service may be provided for the people, and would act upon preconceived ideas in that direction. Dr Jamieson’s suggestion that it has been completely misled by its own advisers, especially as to what would be the attitude of the medical profession when the matter came to a definite issue, is doubtless near the mark. Otherwise its own obduracy, which of course the Minister ignores while dilating unon that of the other side, is difficult to understand. The Minister has not denied that legally the doctors are entitled to decline to offer service in accordance with the Government’s scheme. He would suggest, apparently, that morally they are not entitled to maintain their present attitude. There is an implication of effort at coercion where none should obtain. The doctors, it seems, are wrong to disagree with

the Government! It is a puerile plea. What has happened is that the Government has come up against a legitimate resistance of one aspect of its notions of regimentation which it has been ill-advised enough to court, and which is making it look foolish. It desires the co-opera-tion of the doctors, but only upon its own terms. The medical profession stands upon freedom of contract and the maintenance of a health service of the highest standard. In the matter of maternity service it offers co-operation on a basis which the Government refuses to consider. Therefore it can fairly claim that the onus for the present position is upon the Government by reason of its procedure.