FREE MEDICINES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24817, 17 January 1942, Page 10

FREE MEDICINES

PATIENTS AVOID ANY COST LOSS OF FULL BENEFIT (Special) AUCKLAND, Jan. 16. "By demanding compounds on the free list, some members of the public are depriving themselves of the best in medicine,” said an Auckland chemist yesterday. A postscript to a prescription for a valuable English proprietary medicine, for which a small chax'ge had to be made, and which had been handed to him recently, stated: “If there is any substitute for this product on the free list, please supply.” Evidently the patient, advised by his doctor that the medicine he was prescribing could not be obtained free, had demurred at paying anything toward the correction of his complaint. More often, medical men took it for granted that patients were prepared to pay a few extra pence for the most efficacious medicine obtainable. The patient often protested to the chemist, who had to explain why the extra cost had to be paid, or else take the line of least resistance and defer to the purchaser’s attitude. This unfortunate view of the medical benefits under the Social Security Act inevitably would nullify much of the good of which it was capable, stated another chemist, in agreeing with the comment. The remedy was to extend the list to include valuable drugs for which there was no satisfactory substitute. The conditions under which many proprietary lines were compounded could not be followed in New Zealand. I