Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9th, 1920. COMPULSORY INSURANCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 June 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9th, 1920. COMPULSORY INSURANCE.

Two insurance Bills are now before the British 'Parliament. One, * which has been read a second time, dealjs with unemployment insurance and extends and enlarges the existing scheme. Men will pay 3d per week and women 2£.. Employers will pay the same rates, and the State will contribute one-third of the combined contributions of the employers and employed. Th benefits will be 15s a week for men and 12s for women. There are to be certain lower rates of contribution and benefits for boys and girls between 16 and 18. the .scheme will be extended to about twelve million workers, but several classes are except-ed—non-manual workers with over £250 a year, employees' of local authorities, railway servants, police, 'agricultural workers, domestic servants, and other people who have already statutory rights which give them some form ef insurance. It appears, therefore, that office staffs will come under the the scheme so far as employees. receiving less than £250 a year are concerned. The other Bill, introduced in th< House 'of Commons on March l<jt., similarly expands the National Health Insurance Scheme. It is proposed that the contributions shall be increased as follows:—Employer to 5d a week; male employee, sd; female employee 4d. The State contribution is to remain as at present, namely, two-ninth of the combined contribution of employer and employed in the case of a. man and one-fourth in the ease of a woman. Sickness benefit is to be increased to 15s a week for. men and 12s for women; disablement benefit will be increased to 7s 6d a week • and the maternity benefit to 40s. Medical service is to be improved; a doctor is not to be responsible single handed for more 'than 3,000 people; the insured person’s choice of a doctor will be exereiseable half-yearly instead of yearly; and doctors will be obliged to give emergency treatment and to provide proper surgery and waiting room accommodation. The sanatorium benefit is to be taken out of the National Health Insurance Act altogether to enable the Government to deal with tuberculosis as a whole. All employed persons between 16 and 70 years of age, with certain exceptions, are required to be insured unless they are employed otherwise than in manual labour at a. remuneration of more than £250 a : year. With regard to the Unemployment Insurance Bill there is no doubt that a genuine fear of unemployment is a cause of many economic evils and one would have thought that any effort to deal with the matter would at least have received sympathetic consideration. Its reception, however, says a commercial exchange, by Labour representatives in the House of Commons was far from sympathetic consideration, the usual desire to take all and give nothing—or, at any rate, as little as possoible—being manifest. As to the National Health Insurance Bill, one hesitates to criticso in' principle any measure truly seeking to promote the well-being of the nation, but the fqet remains that many compulsorily-insur-ed persons are seriously reflecting as to whether the scheme has been so universally beneficial as to warrant its fur ther extension