THE HEALTH SCHEME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 September 1938, Page 5

THE HEALTH SCHEME

DR D. G. McMILLAN’S REPLY TO B.M.A. PRESIDENT. VIEWS OF SIR H. BRACKENBURY. The following reply to Dr J. P. S. Jamieson (president of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association) is made by Dr D. G. McMillan: — “Dr Jamieson’s suggestion that my quotations from Dr Brackenbury are incomplete and misleading is uot only unfair but contrary to fact and cannot be substantiated. I repeat my challenge to him to come on to the public debating platform, to line his statements up with mine, give the public an opportunity to hear both sides of the case and then judge which is best —the Government’s or Dr Jamieson’s, and whose statements are the more accurate, his or mine. In his statements Dr Jamieson fails to make a clear differentiation between his own opinions and those of Dr Brackenbury. The point I make in reference to Great Britain is that before the scheme was introduced the doctors opposed it, saying that it would lower the standard of medical practice in Great Britain. Even after they commenced to work the scheme the representative body passed a motion recording its emphatic protest against the ‘discreditable’ methods adopted by the Government to compel them to give unwilling service on terms which ‘this meeting considers to be derogatory to the profession and against the public interest.’ Now the parent body of the B.M.A. says that it has been an undoubted success.

“My logical and reasonable argument is that just as the conscientious doubts and fears expressed by the British doctors proved groundless so too will those which are being conscientiously expressed by many New Zealand doctors today. Dr Jamieson says: Tn his reference to the standard of medical practice inside and outside the Insurance Scheme, Sir Henry Brackenbury’s comparison related' to

Health Insurance practice and similar practice under private contract with societies.’ That is not so. I have it here before me —-November 12, 1927: ‘Dr Brackenbury believed personally that on the whole the Insurance Medical service was rather higher than the other in its general level of efficiency, though this was not capable of proof.’ Again: ‘lt is safe to say that the quality of the service rendered is at least as high among insurance doctors as it is say in private practice.’ In reference to his visit to New Zealand, Sir Henry said: ‘I found, too, that among the general body of practitioners there was still a considerable ignorance of the working of the National Health Insurance - system in Great Britain, and a misconception of its results alike to the public and the profession.’ ” i