HEALTH INSURANCE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 173, 9 August 1937, Page 4

HEALTH INSURANCE

It is all to the good that a subject of stich vital importance as national health insurance should have the widest possible discussion among those in any way qualified to express an opinion. As has been found in other coun.tries where plans of the kind have been intfoduced, it is a many-sided question that has to be viewed from as many attgles if a true conception of all that may be involved in it is to be formed. As to the need for instituting a scheme assiiring competent medical advice and attendance wherever required, there can be nO possible rootb for dispute. What has to be considered is how to establish it in s'uch a way as to assure also both permanence and e&ectiveness. It will probably be pretty generally conceded that members of the medical profession, the general body of family practitiqners, should, from both ed ucation and experience, be in a position to express opinions that are well worthy of the fullest possible consideration at the hands of those with whom iies the heavy responsibility of formulating the scheme and giving it lggislative cffect. With a Government, such as our own, that is avowedly sO greatly bent on "showing the world," there canuot but be some danger of aiming at producing a scheme of stich magnitude as might provoke astonished wonder and admiratioif but still would always be in grave p'eril'of breaking down under its own weight. As one speaker on the subject has said, ,fwhat the New "Zealand branch of British Medical Association does want is careful consideration of the whole position before any costly system, which it might be very difficult to change later, is adopted." That the comprehensive plan the Government is said to have in view would be costly is best indicated by the estimate that has been made of the yearly outgoing involved something like ^^-million, or about £2 10s per head of the' population every year. Taken on top of the exceptionaiiy high taxation— said to be per capita the highest in the world — already to be borne, this would be a pretty heavy further imposition to lay upon the country's private resources even in good times. What it .would mean in a period of general economic depression such as that we have recently passed through — a period duting which the effective functioning of the scheme would be most seriously needed — may readily be imagined. The B.M.A. argument therefore is that, for a start at any rate, the scheme should be planned on less ambitious and less costly lines, that is, that for the present the Government should content itself with a • system which, while providing amply for those of small income and in real need of State assist ance, would bear less heavily on the community as a whole. The ideal of a universal health insurance is doubtless a very pleasantly philanthropic one to entertain and one which it may ultimately be found possible to put into practice. But there must always be grave doubts as to how far it will be possible to maintain in times of national adversity any scheme based upon . the assumption that the days of prosperity will be without end and without interruption. More particularly has this to be taken into account in a country like our own, whose prosperity depends so very greatly upon the readiness and capacity of the people of another country, or of other countries, lo absorb our products and pay renumerative prices for them. There is thus some very good reason behind the suggestion that the Goyernment should devise some Evolution ary scheme that would at once meet the more pressing demands of Ihe present and at the same time be capable of expansion as- eircumstances might warrant. It would obviously be far bettef to proceed along such lines than to risk such a break-down as has already occurred in our Civil Service superannuation scheme through not working it out to practicable figures.