SOCIAL SECURITY FUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25660, 7 October 1944, Page 9

SOCIAL SECURITY FUND

Sir, —It must have been obvious to all who listened to the discussion on the Social Security Fund estimates and heard it claimed that a refugee doctor was collecting £SOOO a quarter and others up to £II,OOO a year from the fund that this scheme has become a racket, well and truly exploited in some cases. When we remember that from 80 to something like 180 patients must be interviewed each and every day of the year before the doctors can collect these amounts, then only do we realise to what extent this racket has'grown. Dr Pottinger told us some time ago that he knew of doctors under the capitation scheme who paid £7OOO. £BOOO, and £9OOO a year income tax. We know of doctors who once found it necessary to go.outside their profession to earn a living, and now, after much boosting from trade unions, find themselves well on the road to prosperity. It is well at this stage to recall that Dr McMillan in 1941, after expressing great concern over the worries of the wives and mothers of our fighting forces, added that there are still a few diehard practitioners who look upon the practice of medicine as a means of making money. To control this vicious form of exploitation, laws would have to be made to limit a doctor’s practice, so as to protect his patients, but, as Herbert Spencer says, the net result of passing laws to protect fools from the consequence of folly, is to fill the world with fools. —I am, etc., Matilda.