NOT ACCEPTABLE TO DOCTORS

Southland Times, Issue 23793, 15 April 1939, Page 6

NOT ACCEPTABLE TO DOCTORS

HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME

GOVERNMENT’S DELAY CRITICIZED I “Until the Government is prepared to negotiate with the British Medical Association and consider the scheme it has put forward, things are at a dead end,” said Dr Garfield Crawford, president of the Southland branch of the association, in commenting on the social security scheme yesterday. “The Government’s scheme as far as it affects the medical profession is not in the interests of the public, and is not acceptable to the profession.” Dr Crawford added that no contract had ever been offered to the doctors; they had been asked to agree to a contract that they had never seen. Until the Government was prepared to negotiate, the hands of the doctors were tied and they could not act. A special meeting had been held in Wellington earlier in the month, and all divisions of the essociation had objected to handling a scheme of which there were no particulars. “You cannot expect a man to accept a position in an office without telling him first what you are going to pay him and what the conditions are, and the medical profession is in the same position,” Dr Crawford said. “The Government has had months and months to treat -with the doctors and has not done so. In Southland the doctors are 100 per cent, against any scheme submitted by the Government without a con r ’ tract. We are in complete accord with the suggestions of the National Health Committee of the British Medical Association in dealing with the matter.”