Canadian Doctor’s Impressions Of Our Medical Services

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 37, 12 September 1949, Page 6

Canadian Doctor’s Impressions Of Our Medical Services

“A land of verdure, warmth, luxurious growth, forests, lakes and rivers. The lakes are always abundant with fish, all too easy to catch, and along every brook you can see happy fishermen with full baskets.” —It is a picture of New Zealand as described by a Canadian, Dr A. Hollenberg, in a series of articles on the New Zealand scene, published in the Winnipeg Free Press. - “Free' drugs on prescription,” writes the doctor in the last of his seies of articles, ‘and a curse rather than a benefit in the New Zealand medical policy. Many visits to the doctors’ offices are for nothing more than minor incidents requiring aspirin or a similar popular remedy like a laxative. Instead of going to buy this the patient sees a doctor, gets a prescription which costs the State 7/6, and goes to the drug store where he gets it free. . “The effect of ‘free’ public hospitals has caused an 11 enormous increase in their utilisation. New Zealand has ten beds per 1000 population, more than double what we have in Manitoba. Free hospitals mean greater occupancy and less easy access of a patient really in need of a hospital bed.” Dr Hollenberg concludes his last article by observing that “in New Zealand the Government has sold something which it cannot deliver and by so doing has wrecked for some years to come a system of medical care which was second to none in the world.”