SICKNESS INSURANCE

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20542, 18 February 1935, Page 5

SICKNESS INSURANCE

Probability of Compulsory Scheme. CONSIDERATION IN N.Z. There is every probability that compulsory sickness insurance will shortly become a question for consideration in New Zealand. An extension of medical care has already been adopted as part of the policy of one political party, and the example of other countries in adopting sickness insurance schemes is bound shortly to bring the matter prominently under general public notice in New Zealand. The subject will be discussed at the conference of hospital boards at Napier, which begins on March 5, and it will also receive attention at the conference of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, which will be held at Dunedin from February 26 to March 1 (says the Wellington “Post”). The recommendations of these conferences will be forwarded to the Government for consideration. It has already been suggested that an inquiry be held by the Government, which will include the taking of evidence from (1) the medical profession, (2) hospital authorities, (3) the pharmaceutical profession, (4) friendly societies, (5) the Government Actuary, and (6) the Department of Health. The countries in which a system of compulsory sickness insurance is in force for the benefit of wage-earners are as follows:—Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Esthonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Irish Free State, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland. Rumania, United Kingdom, Russia and Yugoslavia. There are other countries which have had the system under consideration, including Australia, South Africa and Canada. A committee of the Hospital Boards’ Association and members of the British

Medical Association has recommended that the scheme should be compulsory and should apply to all persons in receipt of salary «and wages below the present income tax limits. It should provide, states the joint committee, a complete medical service, and should include a general practitioner service, hospital benefit, consultant and specialist services, maternity benefit, home nursing, and such other types of medical care as seemed desirable. It was recommended that the scheme should include the dependents of the insured. The committee suggested that the scheme should be applied to all persons between the ages of 16 and 65 years whose annual salary or wages, after deducting £SO for each dependent (wife, child, or widowed mother) is below, say, £260. About 800,000 persons in New Zealand would, it is estimated, receive benefits under the scheme. Commenting on the essential benefits of sickness insurance, as shown in the reports of the twenty countries which have adopted the system, the Bulletin of the Health Organisation of the League of Nations says:—‘‘At the present time, in a very large number of countries, compulsory sickness insurance is a very important factor in the protection of the health of the wage-earners. In the present economic and social conditions, compulsory sickness insurance must be regarded as the most appropriate and rational method of organising the protection of the working classes against sickness. Sickness insurance, when rationally organised, should have three aims: to compensate the worker for the loss of wages due to sickness: to provide the insured and the members of his family with necessary medical treatment: and to endeavour to prevent disease by individual or collective measures, in co-operation with the other organisations responsible for protecting the health of the people.