POLITICAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8529, 7 September 1907, Page 5

POLITICAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

(From Our Parliamentary Corres-

pondent.)

WELLINGTON, Fri !ay SANATORIA.

Are the more or less indigent sink people of the colony to be excluded from the advantages of the Government sanatoria of the colony for the benefit of the well to-do? formed the subject of an interesting discussion in Committee of Supply in the House on Thursday last, when the Health Department vote was brought on for consideration. The charge made for patients is, it appears, £2 2s per week, and this limits the use of the sanatoria to those who have ample means, ar*d are, it is contended, able to provide for their own medical treatment. The poor consumptive has "no other refuge but only hope." The Minister of Health is of opinion that the ordinary hospitals meet the case of the poor man fairly well; but if that be e.o, what is the object of establishing sanatoria, seeing that the well-to-do patient is even better equipped for meeting his needs through other media than State sanatoria. Members with whom I have conversed on the subject hold that it is the sick poor who should have the first consideration from the State, and that these people should be offered every opportunity to recover lost health and become again useful members of the community. The present system of excluding the poor man was described during the discussion as inhuman but the Minister did not appear to be convinced that it was so. It seems strange that while the Government professes eagerness to still further protect infant life it is so little concerned about the preservation of life after it emerges from the stage of juvenility.