EMPHATIC DENIAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 September 1938, Page 3

EMPHATIC DENIAL

SOCIAL SECURITY BILL ENGLISH EXPERT’S VIEWS. POSITION EXPLAINED. (By Telegraph —Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. An emphatic denial of the attitude attributed to Sir Henry Braekenbury by Government advocates in support of the Social Security Bill, was made today by Dr J. P. S. Jamieson, president of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, who also took Dr McMillan to task for alleged misrepresentation. “Persistent efforts,” said Dr Jamieson, “have been made to represent that Sir Henry Braekenbury, the British authority who visited New Zealand last September to advise the association here, was really in favour of just such a system as the Government proposes to introduce. This is entirely contrary to fact, and this denial cannot be too strongly emphasised. “Sir Henry believed that the British system had been of benefit to the people for whom it was devised. He also held that inclusion of dependents as well as insured employees themselves, and provision of specialist service for all those, were to be desired in Britain. But, when asked whether he thought the British panel system should be applied to the whole population, he replied most emphatically in the negative, and this the New Zealand Government well knows. STRONGEST OPPOSITION. At a meeting of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association this specific question was put to Sir Henry Braekenbury: Tn event of a Bill for National Health Insurance on a universal basis being introduced, should the Association resist?’ Sir Henry’s reply was: ‘The strongest opposition should be given to any scheme of a universal character.’ “On his return to England, Sir Henry furnished a report to the British Medical Association in which he urged the parent body to render every possible assistance to the New Zealand branch in resisting the universal general practitioner scheme proposed by the New Zealand Government. SOCIALISATION OF PROFESSION. “As reasons for his advice given in New Zealand Sir Henry said that such a scheme was unnecessary. It would be vastly more expensive, without any advantage, than the limited scheme proposed by the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association. It was much more desirable to make complete provision of medical and allied attention for those for whom it was necessary than to make partial provision to include the whole community, all of whom did not require State help. A scheme which must necessarily involve the existing traditions, methods and interests of many classes of persons, as well as costly administrative arrangements of great complexity, should be introduced gradually in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary fashion. A universal scheme would really amount to socialisation of the whole medical profession. That such a radical experiment should be made on the medical profession, one section of the community, was like ‘trying it first on .the dog.’ • Socialisation of the profession was only justified if a completely socialised state was desired by an overwhelming majority of the people of the country. “Those,” said Dr Jamieson, “were the views expressed in Wellington by Sir Henry Braekenbury. They were stated by Sir Henry to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health, and the Government knows them full well, though it tries to shelter behind his name. All medical men who have had experience of panel work in Britain and general practice in New Zealand agree that panel practice is greatly inferior in its service to patients to practice as ordinarily carried out in New Zealand.

A SECOND DENIAL. “Turning to another point,” said Dr Jamieson, “in a press report from New Plymouth, dated August 26, it is stated, ‘Dr McMillan quoted from a pamphlet written by Dr Jamieson a year ago in which he said that if a universal scheme was introduced doctors would have no option but to work it.’ I flatly deny ever writing as stated. The truth is that in the pamphlet referred to (which was for members of the association only, though Dr McMillan does not hesitate to use it in public), in setting out various effects which would follow if the profession accepted Dr McMillan’s proposals, I made the following statement:—‘Such a scheme would, of necessity, in its working seriously restrict the freedom of practice which now exists to the benefit of all. Theoretically there would be no compulsion to undertake service, but actually, being a universal system, every practitioner who had no other means of livelihood would have to do so.’ * “This warning of the effect on the public and the profession in accepting the proposals is utterly different from the interpretation into which Dr McMillan attempts to twist it. Such obliquity of presentation is quite on a par with the attempt made by Dr McMillan to show that there is a similarity between National Health Insurance as it exists in England today and the socialisation of the profession in New Zealand as proposed by the present Government.

SCHEMES ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. "It should be well known to any responsible politician and is well known to Dr McMillan that there is only one thing in common in the two schemes, namely, the limitation of medical service to general practitioner service. It is just this very restriction that is held to be so deleterious in the English scheme, and that has been copied in the New Zealand scheme. In every other particular the schemes are entirely different. The English scheme is limited to employed persons, including manual workers (other than farm workers) and other employed persons with an income of less than £250 a year. “The English scheme is based on insurance with payments by the insured person and the employer with a relatively small contribution by the State to defray administration expenses. The English scheme has no hospital benefit. “The English scheme was introduced by Mr Lloyd George and was very markedly modified in all its cardinal features to satisfy the irresistible criticism and objections of the medical profession to which Mr Lloyd George had the good sense to pay some attention. “The New Zealand scheme has been introduced by Mr Savage on the ad-

vice of Dr McMillan, M.P., a junior medical practitioner with less than ten years’ experience, and has not been modified in one essential particular in spite of the irrefutable criticism and objection of the medical profession in New Zealand. The British Medical Association in England has recommended the improvement of the English service along the same lines as those proposed by the New Zealand branch in the scheme the branch submitted to the Government.”