CORRESPONDENCE HOSPITAL RATING

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3260, 7 May 1943, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE

HOSPITAL RATING

(To The Editor) Sir, —With reference to resolutions passed recently by local authorities concerning the levy struck by the Thames Hospital Board I would like to remind your readers that in the House of Representatives a few weeks ago the Minister of 'Health stated that any relief to hospital •boards that may be possible in the future would have to be met from the Consolidated revenues and not from the Social Security Fund. His reason for this was that if the Social Security Fund had to provide this relief it could only be done at the expense of benefits now being paid to thousands of necessitous people in every part of the Dominion. Ido not believe that the general sense of our New Zealand community would approve of this. I must point out too that the Social Security Fund has already greatly eased the obligations of the ratepayers in the area under the Thames Hospital Board’s jurisdiction. This has been done by the payment of fees to the board on behalf _of patients very much in excess of the sums collected by the board before the hospital treatment was provided under the Social .Security Act. The following figures showing the amount of the levy in each of the past four years will bear’ this out: 1939- -- -- -- - £16,492 1940- - -- -- — 9,577 1941- -- -- — -- 14,111 1942- -- -- - 13,503

The first oi these figures refers to the year before the Social Security Act was applied to hospitals, and , when announcing a reduction of .40 per cent, in the levy the following year the board chairman, Mr P. Brenan, stated that this had been possible because the board’s finances had been substantially improved by the contributions it had received from the Social Security Fund. As compared with the 1939-40 total the ratepayers enjoyed a reduction of £6915 in the first Social Security year, £2381 in the second, and £2989 in the third. Just exactly what the levy is for the present year I do not know, but I understand it is considerably less than that of 1939-40. . It must also be stated that if the levy increased after the very lowlevel figure of 1939-40' this was the result of the" provision of hospital improvements that were long overdue and which, in the case of Goromandel and Mercury Bay, have simply transformed the facilities available for the treatment of patients. In Mercury Bay,’ particularly, where in the local hospital there was not even a telephone or hot water, Social Security made possible something like a modern hospital for the. first time in the history of the district. Sib, in these serious times when the war has imposed very heavy burdens on the Dominion’s finances, such a matter as hospital rating should be discussed with a sense, of proportion, and it is with this objec I lay the above facts before your readers.—l am, etc., JAMES THORN, Hopse of Representatives, <75/43.