TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays WEDNESDAY, 1st JULY, 1942 A NEW WORD-MEANING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 65, Issue 5492, 1 July 1942, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays WEDNESDAY, 1st JULY, 1942 A NEW WORD-MEANING

BY the art of political manipulation a new and somewhat contradictory interpretation is being encouraged in the use of the word “ free ” in its relation to social services which are made available to the public without a direct or specific charge. It is asserted that people shall claim as a right “ free ” medical service—and the exercise of that right is made to appear the logical outcome of political benevolence. But only a child or a simpleton would seriously accept such an impudent assumption, and not many people would admit such a folly because, in actual fact, the cost is real, constant, and inescapable on those who have any earnings. In reality, far from being “ free,” it is not a cheap service for the majority of wage-earners; the only real difference is that its incidence is indirect and constant. It could, indeed, be claimed that the community cost of the socalled “ free ” State services tends to be greatly increased by reason of the habit of encouraging the foolish belief that it is “ free.” It has been said, and even has it been demonstrated over and over again, that the surest way to have any service abused and exploited is to make it too readily available; in other words, few people set a value on that which is too easily within their grasp. Thus it happens that the misuse of the term “ free ” in association with medical services tends to increase the calls and demands made, with a resultant increase in the cost to the community. This tendency may be much less marked in country communities than in the cities; but it is apparent everywhere; so that, if “ free ” service in our newly-inspired vocabulary is X to be given such widespread interpretation of demand as a right, not only is the service made needlessly costly to the community, but it also creates a serious war-time drawback- In its operation it absorbs a small clerical army which would otherwise be available for war work, and it increases the problem of the shortened medical profession in meeting the needs of the fighting services and the bona fide calls of the civilian communities. The argument that people will seek as a right necessary medical advice in the early stages of sickness is offset by the equal consideration that just as many people will not loiter about the consulting rooms; in other words, most work-a-day people become really ill before they fall into line in the queues. Moreover, in the war-time reckoning, it can happen that time will reveal that the supply of “ free ” medicine, even under medical direction, has substantially raised the per capita consumption of medicinal drugs and substances in an emergency period when the utmost use and conservation of supplies on hand should be nationally practised- No matter how regarded, the idea of demand simply on the assumption that service and supply are “free ” is wrong on the part of the individual and shortsighted in the interests of the community. It is not free: it is a constant tax on the earnings of everybody. Political accountancy does not reveal the monetary cost, and the citizen is left to unravel the tangle of social security charge and national security tax as well as the grants from the Consolidated Fund as best he can. One thing is clear: the taxation yield is measured in millions of pounds taken from the earnings of the people, and a politically-managed scheme that rounds off the millions is not “ free ”: it need not have even the quality of measuring service against cost. It is “ free ” only in the sense that, having been paid for, it leaves as a right the call or the claim upon the service. But that is an unsound and shortsighted practice, because it tends to overload the service and to defeat its purpose in more ways than one. No matter how the politicians may contrive, there is no new meaning for the word “ free,” and misuse of the word, abuse of the service, and the wrongful exercise of theoretic rights can—indeed, will—make “ free ” a dangerous and costly experiment.