NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1943, Page 2

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.

and comprehensive agreement in regard to a medical J health service for the Dominion is hardly to be expected. In observations on this subject made by the Minister of Health last evening possibilities appear, however, of .some approaches being opened to the establishment of a national health service worthy of the name —one which would look, as Mr Nordmeyer said, to prevention as well as to cure.

Leaving aside the troubled question of the socialisation of the medical profession, it should be possible to agree that there is much to be said for the organisation of groups of medical men in clinics. According to Mr Nordmeyer, many of the medical men now serving with the forces overseas, as well as young doctors now being trained, will be desirous of co-operating on these lines after the war. If the Minister is right, foundations may thus be laid for the progressive development of a national medical service capable of conferring considerable benefits on the community, not only in the, cure of sickness, but in the maintenance of health and prevention of disease.

To the layman it is not obviously to be regarded as outrageous that an increasing proportion of medical men should become salaried servants of the State —as some doctors and members of other professions are now and were even in normal peace conditions —and should pool their skill in organised and co-operative community service. It may appear, indeed, that in these conditions doctors would be offered an advantageous alternative to the rather harried life a good many of then) live now. It is highly desirable that such developments as the Minister of Health sketched last evening, where a national health service is concerned, should be considered dispassionately on their merits.

Possibilities on which much might follow are suggested in Mr Nordmeyer’s statement, that in two districts negotiations are taking place between the Government and members of the medical profession with a view to the establishment of clinics.