MEDICAL SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1943, Page 3

MEDICAL SERVICE

PROPOSALS & DISCUSSIONS IN BRITAIN STAND TAKEN BY DOCTORS. FULL PUBLIC EXAMINATION DESIRED. LONDON. May 11. The Ministry of Health made a confidential suggestion to influential doctors throughout the country that the doctors after the war should become Slate employees on a fixed salary scale. The doctors considered the suggestion in secret and rejected it. Reporting this, the “Daily Express” Says that the doctors want a Royal Commission publicly to examine the whole question of public medicine. They feel that the present secrecy in the discussions between the profession and the Ministry is undesirable. The Ministry suggested a system of health centres controlled by local authorities in which people would choose their own doctor from those available. It suggested a salary scale of £4OO for a centre assistant who had finished his training. £650 after three years and an increase of a few pounds annually thereafter. The doctors say the scheme is insufficiently comprehensive and would make them the servants of local authorities rather than the friends and physicians of their patients. They also argue that the salaries reward grey hairs rather than ability. The doctors want the Beveridge report endorsed before they are singled out for control. They are prepared to see the end of private practices and huge fees for star surgeons, but want a system of groups of doctors under the control of their own profession and not under the control of local authorities.