THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, March 24, 1945. THE MEDICAL SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25802, 24 March 1945, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, March 24, 1945. THE MEDICAL SERVICE

When the New Zealand medical scheme comes up as a topic for debate, either in the public prints or in private conversation, it is seldom applauded. It frequently arouses a show of acrimony in those who discuss it. The most recent discussion, which originated in a forthright and, for the most part, shrewdly critical examination of the system by an experienced journalist from Sydney, has been productive of disputation; but has discovered little or nothing in praise of the costly medical service which we have instituted in New Zealand. The Sydney journalist has succeeded, albeit with some picturesque exaggeration, in pointing out the main faults in the scheme. In a sharp comment upon it he charges the Government with having “ by false pretences sold the public a service which it did not possess to sell.” This, fundamentally, is what has happened. The Government, imbued with a State socialist ideology which has become a faith beyond the reach of reason, has been endeavouring to force the doctors, who are not members of a State service, to operate a medical scheme of which they do not approve. The Government, if it were not obtusely engrossed in persuading the public that it is getting something for nothing, would realise that the best system of medicine cannot be one in which a policy of coercion is being employed to make the members of the profession parties to a system of medical practice which runs counter to their conviction of what is required. The rash charge of a Katoomba doctor that the New Zealand medical scheme has been “ disastrous for doctors’ morals ” is as a generalisation demonstrably false. The Australian journalist, although he also is apparently hypnotised by the financial aspects of the free medical service, makes the sufficient reply to this cheap sneer when he shows that the number of patients per doctor in the Dominion is inordinately high. This means that the ordinarily popular practitioner scarcely has the time to meet all calls for his services, and certainly has to limit to the minimum the visits which he makes to the homes of his patients. The draw-off of doctors, and especially younger men, into the army, would alone have cast a heavy burden upon the rest of the profession, and the introduction of the free medical service has aggravated the difficulties. It may be doubted whether the present rich reward offering to doctors, or a combination of circumstances, including release from military obligations, accounts for the increased number of students seeking admission to the Medical School. But a moment’s reflection will show that in the case of the conscientious practitioner any considerable increase in income in the war years is due to extra work of a temporary duration. The position actually will be, in a few years, that with the army surgeons back in practice and the output of graduates from the Medical School fixed at a higher level than ever in the past, the profession in New Zealand will be over-crowded, with a consequent sharp diminution in the average individual income. There is not, however, any prospect that in that future time the people of New Zealand will be better served by the medical profession, because the scheme is in essence an upholder of mediocrity and an incentive to the man who practises medicine with, as Dr Luke, the chairman of the New Zealand branch of the 8.M.A., puts it, “ a shrewd business head.” It is, with so many imperfections in the service as it operates, and so dim a future for the standard of medical practice under it, a great pity that criticism of it should be based, as is that by the Katoomba doctor, upon partisan and misconceived premises. A critical examination of it is most desirable, in the public interest; but it will not be undertaken officially while people continue to pay out with apparent placidity for allegedly free benefits that are in actual fact in most cases costing them dearly.