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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 6, 7 June 1913, Page 4

HOSPITALS AND CHARITABLE AID. The conference held in Wellington on Thursday by delegatus of local bodies contributing to the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, regarding the levies on local bodies, had some useful suggestions to make. The increased cost is proving a heavy burden to tiie ratepayers, and while our hospitals must, at any cost, be properly equipped and properly administered if there are any methods by which the direct public expenditure can be legitimately decreased they should be put into immediate operation. There can be no objection to contributing to the Board's funds, being

ex offiico a member of the Board, for these gentlemen are naturally in a position to give the Board much valuable .advice where individual cases are eon-' cerned, due to their inevitable local knowledge, and the number of elective members might easily be proportionately decreased. Neither can we see any objection to the estimates of levies being submitted to the various local bodies for consideration and report instead of being arbitrarily fixed as they are now. This would save a whole lot of time and avoid much subsequent worry and annoyance. It does not seem exactly material in the case of sa/iatoria that the cost of indigent patients should be charged to the individual sanatoflum, instead of against the Hospital Board, for the money has to be found by the public in either case. But the most valuable suggestion made by the conference is that, care should be taken in the assessment and collection of fees from the inmates of public hospitals. In many cases people who are able to pay the whole or a portion of the fees for their attention dodge their responsibilities on a plea of poverty. If those who escape payment, upon whatever grounds, were made to sign a statutory declaration as to their means, they could be treated, if ever a suspicion and enquiry justified it, exactly as judgment debtors, are treated, and compelled to cither pay or accept the alternative punishment. We are quite satisfied that a very -considerable leakage exists in this respect, and .it is a leakage that, in the interests of the ratepayers, should be stopped at once. With regard to the cost of the treatment of natives being retained as a charge against the Civil List, we are not at all sure that there should not: be some discrimination. The Maori is always agitating for full equality with the pakeha, and if he wants equal privileges he should be prepared to accept equal responsibilities. Many of the natives are quite as well able to pay for their hospital accommodation as their white brethren, and it is difficult to understand why, in these cases, there should be any discrimination between the two races. The whole subject bristles with difficulties, but there is undoubtedly room for amendment. Such conferences as that held in Wellington are decidedly useful, and will do much towards finding a solution of the problem of hospital and charitable aid administration.