DOCTORS AND THE SALARY
SIR,—Your note Doctors and the Salary, and other articles on this subject in recent issues, seem to exhibit a lack of understanding as to why doctors are so adamant on this matter, a lack that is unfortunately shared by the public. It is obvious that if general practitioners are to be paid by salary all such salaries must be equal, if increments for seniority are discarded. But practices will never of their own accord be equal in numbers. To grade salaries according to numbers would only be another way of paying by capitation system. Consequently, where Dr. A has 4,000 patients, and his neighbour Dr. "B has 3,000 patients, both drawing the same salary, it is apparent that 500 patients of the former will be allocated to the latter either by the powers that may eventually be or by the dictates of human nature. Thus free choice of doctor, with its corollary, free choice of patient, will cease.
Your analogy of the thousands of salaried doctors in publio authority and Government service is in no way pertinent, as these doctors are not dealing with so many patients, but with a specific job of work, generally for a stated number of hours over a stated period. If only the public would realise that the doctors are fighting on their behalf for their right of free choice, perhaps this wretched impasse would be terminated more quickly, by the force of public opinion.—Yours, &c., S. WRAY.
Ingham, Lincoln.
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