THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Thursday, May 14, 1942. HOSPITAL RATING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24915, 14 May 1942, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Thursday, May 14, 1942. HOSPITAL RATING

One of the popular fallacies/which receive political encouragement in the Dominion is that various social services are free to the community. We hear it said frequently that we enjoy a system of free education. It is an erroneous statement. The maintenance of our education system costs the taxpayers more than four and a-half millions a year. Mr Revie, a member of the Tuapeka County Council, .said, with perfect truth, last freek, when the amount of the hospital levy was under discussion, that, while people spoke of free hospital treatment, free medicine, and free.. medical service, everything was “ well paid for.” The' supposedly free hospital treatment is leading to fresh demands of considerable dimensions being made on the local contributing authorities. In the case of the Dunedin City Council, the requisition by the Otago Hospital Board will involve the ratepayers in the need to provide £10,599 more than they paid last year. An increase in the rates will be necessitated by this increase in the amount of the levy by the Hospital Board. The City Council will have no option in the matter. The .Tuapeka County ratepayers will have to provide £4160 more than last year. It is not possible to agree with the statement by Mr Revie that, upon the introduction of the Social Security legislation, many people “ rightly/ expected a reduction in the hospital levy.- It should have been obvious that the effect of this legislation Would be to increase heavily the demand j for hospital accommodation. Not only is the payment that is made by the Government to hospital' boards in respect of each patient insufficient to meet the cost of the maintenance of, and attention to, the patient, but boards have been compelled to make provision for the extension of their hospitals in order that they may be able to receive the cases that are clamouring for admission. Only yesterday we reported that a member of a trade union in Auckland had been for some months unsuccessfully applying for accommodation in the hospital in order that he might undergo an operation. The plain fact is that an increase in the rates levied by the hospital boards on local authorities became, inevitable. The argument that the State, which has imposed on the ratepayers the additional burdens that have thus to be shouldered by them, should accept the whole or at least part of the increased cost of hospital administration is sufficiently weighty to call for serious attention. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the general taxpayer, as distinguished from the local ratepayer, is not bearing a considerable share of the cost of the - social services. The hospital benefits paid out of the Consolidated Fund, to which everyope contributes in some form • or another,absorbed £ 1,188,077 in 11 months of the past financial year—-£ 100,000 more than' in the corresponding term of the previous year; maternity benefits cost £507*572, and medical benefits £122,757 in, the same period; and the cost of the “ free ” medicine was no less than £245,842. While, therefore, protests may legitimately be made concerning the; incidence of the hospital levy, it is important to ’’remember that the “ retired gentleman,. living in comfort,” who Has' been represented as escaping payment for hospital benefits, is certainly not going ; altogether scot free. .. ; 1