HEALTH SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22516, 26 September 1938, Page 8

HEALTH SCHEME

DOCTORS' ATTITUDE IN ENGLAND

REPLY TO PRESIDENT OF MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

(PBEM ASBOCIATIOX TELEOHAM.)

WELLINGTON, September 24.

A-reply to the president of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association (Dr. J. P. Jamieson) was made to-day by Dr. D. G. McMillan. M.P., in the following statement: — "Dr. Jamieson's suggestion that my quotations from Dr. Brackenbury are incomplete and misleading is not only unfair but contrary to fact and cannot be substantiated," said-Dr. McMillan. "I repeat my challenge to him to come on to the public debating platform, to line his statements up with mine, give the public an opportunity to hear both sides of the case, and then judge which is best—the Government's or Dr. Jamieson's, and whose statements are the more accurate,- his or mine. "In his statements, Dr. Jamieson fails to make a clear differentiation between his own opinions and those of Dr. Brackenbury. The point I make in reference to Great Britain is that before the scheme was introduced the doctors opposed it, saying that it would lower the standard of medical practice in Great Britain. Even after they commenced to work the scheme, the representative body passed a motion recording its .emphatic protect against the 'discreditable' methods adopted by the Government to compel them to give unwilling service on terms which 'this meeting considers to be derogatory to the profession and against the public interest.'

Success in England "Now the parent body of the British Medical Association says that it has been an undoubted success. My logical and reasonable argument is that just as the conscientious doubts and fears expressed by the British doctors proved groundless, so, too, will those which are being conscientiously expressed by many New Zealand doctors to-day.

"Dr. Jamieson says: 'ln his reference to the standard of medical practice inside and outside the insurance scheme, Sir Henry Brackenbur a y's comparison related to health insurance practice and similar practice under private contract with -societies.' That is not so. I have it here before me— November 12, 1927: 'Dr. Brackenbury believed personally that on the whole the insurance medical service was rather higher than the other in its general level of-efficiency, though this was not capable of proof.' Again, 'lt is safe to say that the quality of the service rendered is at least as high among insurance doctors as it is, say. in private practice.'

"In reference to his visit to New Zealand, Sir Henry said: 'I found, too, that among the general body of practitioners there was still a consiSerable ignorance c£ the working of the National Heeith Insurance system in Great Britain, and a misconception of its results alike to the public and the profession'."