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The Evils of the Insurance Act
TOO MUCH DRUGGINGSir Walter Kinnear, controller of the insurance department of the ministry of health, declared at a meeting of one of the societies that one of the most disheartening things in the administration of the insurance act was the large sum of money spent every year on drugs, amounting to between 10 and 10½ million dollars. This represented a great wastage of money, and unless there was some diminution it would be necessary to make efficient administrative arrangements which would tend to check that expenditure. He was convinced that timely treatment in convalescent homes would be of more value than all the drugs in the British pharmacopeia. I may point out that the wastage of money on drugs could have been foreseen as inevitable by any one acquainted with medical practice in this country, but it evidently never troubled the politician mainly