DOCTORS' STRIKE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1432, 6 May 1912, Page 5

DOCTORS' STRIKE.

SIMULTANEOUS RESIGNATION. A NEW DRAMATIC TURN. GRIEVANCES OF MEDICAL MEN. By Telcgraph-Pr«-.ss Assoclation-Copyrleht. (Kcc. Mny !i, 5.5 p.m.) London, May 4. Owing to Mr. Lloyd-George's Opera Hous'o speech on February 12, and Mr. Mastc-rman's threat that, if necessary, tho Insurance Act scheme would beworked in England, as in Irolnnd, without medical benefits, the committee, of Mm British Medical Association lias asked 26,000 doctors to sign an additional pledge to simultaneously resign all club, friendly society, dispensary, and other forms of contributory contract practice and appointments throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, unless their demands aro granted. Also, except in cases of urgent necessity, not to render professional service, to peoplo insured through any voluntary medical charity. Doctor Cox, secretary of the association, in explaining this new dramatic turn thus given to the controversy, explains that in the event of a. doctors' strike, thoso insured would have to make their own private arrangements for medical attendance. This would imply the breakdown of one of the most attractive features of tho Act.

In his speech at the National Insurance Conference in the London Opera Hou.se on February 12, the grievances of the doctors were considered by Mr. LloydGeorge, under three heads—the objection Ito friendly society control, the demand for an "income limit," and tho claim that 1 contract practice should not be introduced in districts where it does not now exist. Mr. Lloyd-George urged that the Act relieves medical men from the control of the societies except in cases which fail wit'jin the Harmsworth amendment—an amendment from which the Government will "declino to budge." He maintained, that n national income limit is impossible and that the filing of the limit must bo left to the Insurance Commissioners and the local As for the districts in which there is no contract practice, it need not necessarily be introduced into them. . The doctors, ho said, might continue to attend their patients on the old terms, and money set aside for "doctoring" could bo paid into a "general pool," from which the doctors', bills could be defrayed. Under the Act, in fact, doctors already engaged in contract practice would receivo 50 per cent, mnro money, while thoso not engaged in it need not take it up. What would happen, he asked, if the doctors refused to discuss terms? He answered tho question himself: "Nothing, except this—all the safeguards inserted in the Act for the protection of the medical profession would be swept out at once." He ended by littering two warnings: Tho first was that a strike of doctors would be just the thing needed to encourage tho growth of medical institutes and dispensaries; the second was that the doctors' safeguards, only secured in tho teeth of the opposition of the friendly societies, would never be regained if they were once abandoned.