FREE MEDICAL SERVICE

Southland Times, Issue 22073, 21 July 1933, Page 5

FREE MEDICAL SERVICE

RETURNED SOLDIER PROPOSAL. DOCTORS “NOT KEEN.” Some medical men in Christchurch, including returned soldier practitioners, are not very keen on the idea of the Christchurch Returned Soldiers’ Association Executive that a meeting be called to consider the setting up of a free medical service for returned men. It was suggested by the executive that Dr. A. J. Orchard should call a meeting of returned soldier doctors to consider the question. When approached, Dr. Orchard would make no comment on the project. He said he had not been notified of the proposal yet. “There are so many applicants for free services of all kinds in New Zealand to-day,” said one returned soldier doctor, “that it makes one wonder what the poor medical practitioner is going to do. Is he to get no fees at all? New Zealand is better endowed in respect of free medical services already than most countries I know of. and already people who can well afford to pay are getting free attention. You have only to look at the hospital to see that. Already a large amount of a doctor’s time is taken up with free work at Christchurch Hospital, and really I don’t see any need for a new free service. A considerable part of the free work at the hospitals consists of dealing with pensioners. The Government sends them there because it knows they get the service free. There is another reason for extending the system. Already, in his capacity as a private citizen, the returned soldier without means may get free treatment at the hospital.” Another doctor, also a returned soldier, stressed the point of there being no need to extend a service that already was largely free. He considered that being a returned soldier did not entitle a man to have everything free. Returned soldiers would always be reasonable' treated by doctors, and they had the hospital to go to as well. Other doctors spoke on similar lines, some stressing the fact that in these times doctors were doing a large, proportion of their work for nothing.