USE OF MEANS TEST

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19990, 15 July 1939, Page 13

USE OF MEANS TEST

ASHBUR-OIT HOSPITAL PREFERENCE TO NEEDY REPLY TO HON. P. FRASER MVr I’rt‘Ms A ssocin t inn. ) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. - I’ a . c.zi'/.'n cl .he Air.burccn Hos- . a. _..a.d in .he provision of .maternity .bcnci'ilts under the Social Security Act is not altered by the catement by the Minister of Health, the Hon. P. Fraser, that there is' r,o means test in the availability of the benefits, according to Dr. J. Russell Wells, chairman of the hospital* committee of the board. The Minister was commenting on the decision of the board to consider the imposition of a means test for me acinus, an cf patients to its maternity hospital because of the accommodation problem.

“Although the Government or the Minister may have provided for no means test in the Social Security Act, the position of the board still is that to retain sufficient accommodation for necessitous eases it will have to institute a test,” said Dr. Wells. “The whole position is so illogical,” continued Dr. Wells, when emphasising that the limited maternity accommodation available could not be expected to be sufficient when it was thrown open free to all-com-ers. The accommodation was chiefly designed to meet the requirements of necessitous cases—cases which the board: still regarded as its primary responsibility —-and so that such patients could be treated as was required of the board by the Hospital Boards Act some action was necessary. “Everyone is entitled to apply for accommodation under the new scheme, but when those who can afford to pay something are excluding needy patients we are forced to preserve for the laiter the accommodation to which they are- entitled, and which it is our duty to see that they get,” Dr. Wells added.