MEDICAL SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 September 1941, Page 4

MEDICAL SERVICE

SOCIAL SECURITY BILL IMPORTANT DEBATE IN HOUSE. AN OPPOSITION SUGGESTION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. When the Health Committee of the House of Representatives sent back the Social Security Amendment Bill yesterday afternoon this action gave rise last night to the most important debate for a long time. The Bill, which provides for a free general practitioner medical service, first appeared in the House last Friday, when it was referred to the committee for further examination and the hearing of evidence. It came back with amendments which did not afiect the principle but made machinery alterations to a number of clauses.

Last night was an occasion in the House. The debate on the Bill was initiated by the Minister of Health. Mr Norclmeyer. He denied charges that it was coercive, and said that it was an attempt to provide a scheme acceptable alike to the medical profession and the people. The Leader- of the Opposition, Mr Holland, declared that, every doctor who came under the scheme would become a State employee, with a consequent decline in the standard of medical service available to the people. He described the Bill as clearly Socialistic and a confession by the Government of a policy it had been trying to conceal for years. Mr Holland moved an amendment to defer the Bill till the end of the war.

The Acting-Prime Minister, Mr Nash, described the measure as an instrument embodying the principle that medical treatment should be made available to all. irrespective of whether a patient were rich or poor. It had been in the forefront of Labour's policy for six years. The three speeches were in the best Parliamentary tradition, the debate rising to a high plane wholly in keeping wiih the importance of the subject.