DOMINION HEALTH SCHEME

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23186, 27 April 1945, Page 2

DOMINION HEALTH SCHEME

Australian Critic MELBOURNE, April 23. “The consumption of drugs has jumped so notably under New Zealand’s national health scheme that both the Government and the medical authorities are worried about it," says Mr Douglas Brass, writing in the “Melbourne Herald.” He quotes a hospital superintendent as telling him “the people are taking all sorts of hog's wash. It is a great day for the chemist and the patent medicine man.” Mr Brass says that while it was originally estimated that 6/- a head of the population would cover the health schemes, the pharamaceutical benefits figure this year will near 12/- a head. The Minister of Health believes that a few doctors are piling on the cost in an effort to sabotage the plans, but that most are prescribing more expensive drugs because they know the patient does not have to pay. Mr Brass lists three influences at work in sending up New Zealand’s national medicine bill. They are: (1) People like taking medicines when they do not cost anything; (2) doctors like prescribing them when they do not cost anything: (3) war worries lead to sedative taking.