The Southland Times TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1938. Health Insurance And The Doctors

Southland Times, Issue 23624, 27 September 1938, Page 6

The Southland Times TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1938. Health Insurance And The Doctors

Speaking at Gore on Saturday night Dr D. G. McMillan described the present system or fighting ill-health, through existing separate units, as a sort or unorganized guerrilla warfare against disease.” This is a fait example of the misleading analogy upon which Dr McMillan depends heavily in his attempts to convince the people of New Zealand that socialization will increase the efficiency of the medical profession. Doctors are separate units” only in the sense that they carry out private practice from their own surgeries and are free to manage their affairs as individuals. It should not be necessary to inform Dr McMillan that the medical profession is organized more thoroughly and carefully than any other professional group in the country. The doctors accept a code of ethics of the strictest kind. They conform to standards that are designed to give the maximum protection to patients; their work makes necessary a constant co-operation within the profession; and the essential nature of scientific research, with which every type of medical practice is connected, is a collective approach on the widest possible basis to the problems of disease. The important fact, however, is that this organization is not imposed from outside by an arbitrary authority, but has evolved within the profession and draws upon the experience of its members for the impulse and direction of progressive action. Apparently it is this, more than anything else, which afflicts the sponsors of a political health scheme. Socialist demagogues believe that all authority should be vested in the State. They know that the doctors occupy a high place in the esteem and respect of the community, that they perform a service of vital importance, and that once they have been socialized it is going to be easy to cast the net a little wider among the professions. If the Labour Party really wanted to give the people the best available health service it would show some inclination to accept the advice of the men and women who have to provide the service. But the Government has shown from the beginning that it subscribes to the doctrine of socialist infallibility. The doctors ' were asked to submit a report on the proposed health scheme; but when they did this their suggestions were completely ignored. It was much better, the Government seemed to think, to hear the approving echo of the report from the Parliamentary Select Committee than to give attention to expert opinion. In the words used in a statement by the British Medical Association, printed yesterday, “the Government has turned a deaf ear to the united representations of the association and has preferred instead to act on the independent advice of a junior medical practitioner who is a member of the Government party.” The result of this highhanded policy has been a growth of. strong opposition among the doctors. It should be obvious that no health service can be complete or adequate which is not based on a whole-hearted cooperation between the medical profession and the Government. But the Labour Party does not seem to think that this co-opera-tion is necessary. Apparently health is one more benefit to be taken from the people and handed back to them, a little the worse for wear, as the gift of socialism. The Government believes that a universal practitioner service will bring improvement to the public health; the doctors say that it will lower the standard of medical practice. Both parties cannot be right. It is only reasonable to assume that doctors know more than the politicians of a subject to which they give all their attention and for which they have prepared themselves through years of training and skilled effort. Dr McMillan rejects newspaper criticism because, he claimed, it was “a well-known fact” that the Press was controlled by “wealthy interests opposed to the people.” Does he reject the criticism of the B.M.A. for a similar reason? Or does he seriously believe that the opinion of “a junior medical practitioner” is of greater value than that of an overwhelming majority of the doctors in New Zealand today? This is a point of judgment which electors are now being asked to decide for themselves.