MEDICAL BENEFITS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 8

MEDICAL BENEFITS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Speaking as one unconnected with the medical profession and also with trade unions, but as one who owes perfect health to first-class medical skill, I would like to make a slight comment on the position that has arisen in connection with the proposed benefits of the Social Security Act in regard to the medical side. Ail sorts of trade unions are sending in for publication the same resolution saying they will uphold the Government in whatever action it takes. Now, the members of these same unions who so blithely pass this resolution and who. in many cases, during depressions have been most generously treated by doctors, are all in pretty good health or they wouldn't have been at the meetings. But let them or theirs be seriously ill, and I know what they will say then. Each man, naturally, sets a very high value on his own life, and when sickness comes his call will be for the doctor known to have given skilled service to ttie community, and who has proved to have been worthy of the confidence placed in him.

The doctor with the large practice has it because of his skill, professional and psychological. No patient under the present systen. goes to such a doctor because he has to, but because he is the special doctor he wishes to attend hina.

I know only too well how a doctor in addition to giving his professional skill carries his patient. Under the present system, the poorest get the benefit in the public hospitals of this skilled attention from the leading

doctors in New Zealand, who act in an honorary capacity while carrying on their private practice. These are the men who are part of New Zealand, and have the same outlook and language as we have ourselves; and you have only to be pretty ill to know how much details like that count at such a time.

One little thing I have never seen explained. Of course I know what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander as far as the Government is concerned. The Government applies, a very rigid means test in allocating the pensions under the Social Security Act, but it raises its hands in horror at the B.M.A.'s proposals which suggest a means test that is very high and which offers some graduated measure of assistance to everybody who is not really well off. Am I right in saying that at the famous Mayo Clinic in America, to which patients from all over the world go, the fee is strictly according to the means of the patient? Yes, you can have your State medical service; -it is the people of New Zealand who will suffer under that system, not the doctors. —I am, etc.,

ONLOOKER,