HEALTH BENEFITS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1940, Page 4

HEALTH BENEFITS

GENERAL PRACTITIONER SCHEME

DEPARTMENT PREPARES PLAN. SUBMISSION TO MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. • A plan for the introduction of the general medical practitioner scheme under the Social Security Act has been prepared by the Health 'Department for submission to the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association.

“Now that our plans are ready for submission to the B.M.A. I have no doubt that further negotiations will take place,” said the Minister of Health, Mr Armstrong, in an interview yesterday. “Even if the medical men had been ever so willing, I do not think the general practitioner scheme could have been placed in operation very much before this, because it was a very big job to outline and submit proposals that would make provision for all cases and all circumstances. It is a' much bigger job than the general public imagines.” Though the Minister was not prepared to give any details of the plan, he said it embraced the department’s ideas of what was reasonable. A reasonable time would have to be allowed the branch of the British Medical Association to consider the proposals and to make suggestions. “In any case, things are changing so rapidly from day to day, even from hour to hour, that goodness knows what the next move will be,” said the Minister. “It may be necessary to do things under the war regulations—under the clause covering the welfare of the Dominion—and to adopt a certain course that would not be thought about in ordinary circumstances. Nothing has been done, but negotiations for the introduction of the general practitioner scheme are still under way.”