MATERNITY BENEFITS

Southland Times, Issue 23839, 9 June 1939, Page 3

MATERNITY BENEFITS

To The Editor Sir, —Can you inform me whether the Invercargill maternity hospitals intend to contract with the Government for the maternity benefits now available; if so, when; if not, what reasons they give for their attitude? Is it not a fact that no alteration of any kind is necessary in the actual relation between nurse and patient ifthe scheme is adopted? This puts the scheme on quite a different basis from that proposed for the doctors so that it cannot be obiected to on any professional grounds. Is the objection financial? The payments from the Social Security Fund appear to be at least equal to the regular charges of such a hospital. In any case more expensive hospitals elsewhere have adopted the scheme so that any such objection can obviously be overcome. Do the hospitals object to the method or principle of the scheme? With 80 per cent, of all the hospitals in New Zealand adopting it, the scheme IS obviously firmly established, and no action of theirs will stop it. If improvements can be suggested, surely these will receive more favourable consideration from those helping the scheme than from those opposing it? With probably an average of only four or five patients a week each it seems trivial to inquire whether . the clerical work involved is a factor in the position. Finally, then, who pays for this stand of the hospitals against the granting of maternity benefits? Not the hospitals themselves. Oh no, with a virtual monopoly of the available hospitals they can sit back and let the poor patient pay for someone else’s quarrel. Surely a woman has enough expense, work and worry bearing children without this extra thought to cheer (?) her—that the Social Security Fund is offering to pay £ll of her expenses, and a few nurses are deliberately preventing her having it. I trust that the position will soon be rectified.—Yours, etc., PARENT. June 7, 1939.