MINISTER’S STATEMENT RESENTED BY B.M.A.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17832, 28 April 1926, Page 14

MINISTER’S STATEMENT RESENTED BY B.M.A.

CHAIRMAN REPLIES JO HON J. A. YOUNG. Per Preee Association. WELLINGTON, April 27. Dr H- E. Gibbs, chairman of the council of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, has made the following reply to the remarks of the Hon J. A. Young, Minister of Health:— “ The executive of the British Medical Association read with regret and some degree of resentment the statements of the Minister of Health at Huntly, as reported in the Press. “ When the Health Department, the hospital boards and the British Medical Association are all working together for the betterment and improved service of our hospitals, it is hardly fair or generous, or, as the schoolboy would put it, it is not playing cricket, for the Minister, of all people, to attribute purely selfish and interested motives to one of the parties. The Minister’s remarks that the control of the hospitals would remain with the people, and that it would be a serious mistake if such control were to pass into the hands of the

medical profession, assume that such a condition was the aim and object of the doctors, or would be welcomed by them, whereas we again emphatically assert that neither individually nor coUectively do the doctors desire to control the hospitals or their policy. “ The doctors do feel that by reason of their intimate relationships with these institutions they should know something about them, and that their opinions should therefore carry some weight and respect. They know’ that good as our hospitals are, they could be made better, could be made to serve a wider public, could be run more economically and could be made of greater educational value and\ service to the medical profession, from which the public would receive most benefit. Knowing this should not the medical profession speak out? And if it does, should it not expect the Minister of Health, of all people, to listen sympathetically to the views expressed, instead of excusing and accounting for the taihoa policy and smug complacency that all in the hospitals’ garden is lovely, by insinuating that the interest of the doctors and the British Medical Association is wholly selfish, and has the ulterior object of getting control of the hospitals? “ So far is this from being the case that were it at all possible or . probable, the British Medical Association and the doctors would shrink from the responsibility. It is not desired to traverse the report of the speech in detail, the covert belittling of the American authority because it is American, the drawing of the red herring of appalling fees across the path (when all know that all charges in America are appalling to our standards) and the! ambiguous use of the term 4 community * as applied to the hospitals. One might point out that the Minister’s reference to British hospitals was particularly unfortunate for his argument, as these hospitals arc run just as it is advocated that ours should be run, free from political influence and control, with selected boards rather than elected, and where the income (from voluntary subscriptions) controls the expenditure, and not, as with us, where estimates, and therefore expenditure, keep mounting up year by year with no finality in sight.”