Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1941. STATE MEDICAL SERVICE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 September 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1941. STATE MEDICAL SERVICE.

ALTHOUGH it wears ai times the aspect of a hopeless deadlock. the current controversy between the Government and the members of the medical profession is not obviously incapable of harmonious adjustment. The most hopeful proposal that has been advanced is that a State salaried medical service should be established, and expanded to whatever extent is shown, as time goes on. to be necessary and desirable. The appointment of salaried doctors would lend itself to an orderly organisation of medical sei-vices in both arban and rural districts and might be expected to avoid or overcome many of the difficulties which have lately been a topic of heated discussion. There is no apparent reason why private medical practice should not be carried on side by side with a State salaried service. Apart from the fact that the people of the Dominion are now being taxed for a medical service which as yet has been provided only in some details, there is general agreement that competent medical advice and treatment should be available to all who need them, irrespective of their financial means. The employment by the State of salaried doctors seems to be the simplest and most' equitable method of satisfying these requirements. While it would adequately protect the professional standing of the doctors concerned and give them economic security, a well-organised State medical service would confer definite benefits on the community, by facilitating early and effective treatment and in other ways, and might be developed in relation to other medical services in response to and in accordance with the community demand. As regards both medical men and patients, the establishment of a Slate salaried medical service would amount only to an extension and elaboration of arrangements that already are well established in public hospitals and elsewhere. In. the extent Io which store is set by patients on a private and uncontrolled relationship with their medical advisers the situation might be loft largely to adjust itself. Financially, the employment by the State of salaried doctors appears to be decidedly preferable either to the original capitation proposal or to Hie scale payments per visit, by patient to doctor or vice versa, proposed in Hie amending Bill now before Parliament. With other things to be said in its favour, a State salaried medical service should lend itself well to the development by stages of an extended medical survey of the community, directed not only'to the early diagnosis of disease, but to the elimination by education and advice of many factors contributing' to physical deterioration or disease. Under such a scheme, doctors should find enlarged opportunities of helping people to maintain and improve their standards of health. Even more valuable service might he rendered in that way than in the treatment of the sick, necessary as that of course is. It seems wholly desirable that the institution of a service on. these lines should be discussed by the Government and the members of the medical profession. Agreement of course would have to be reached on the adjustment of details, but this ought to present no serious difficulty. Through, the agency of a salaried medical staff, the Government should be able to give full effect to its policy and to do so in conditions to which the members of the medical profession could raise no obvious objection.