A NATIONAL MEDICAL SERVICE
Snt,—I have just read your comments on the Health Bill's progress, and note with much surprise that you consider that the operation of the Bill should benefit the health of the country considerably. You give no reasons in support of this statement. As there are limits to the working capacity of all men, even of doctors, it is impossible to understand how Mr. Bevan's contribution to medicine will bring about less disease. You will, Sir, agree that any good doctor is doing as much work as he can, and probably
more than he should, or most other men would. of may admit that no direction from above will increase the output of work of a keen man, ncr will it convert the less industrious into zealots.
At present the medical profession is short of doctors of all sorts ; the volume of work to be done is a fairly constant factor, though the number of persons to be seen may well increase when the general public, forget- ting taxation, imagine that their medical treatment is " free." Is it not obvious, therefore, that the only possible result of the new Health Bill is hurried work done by an overstrained and overtired medical personnel? I have been led to believe that good medical work demands patience and tact and care and courtesy from the doctor, quite apart from professional skill. The lay public certainly appreciate these qualities, and will be the first to notice their absence in the future. May I now refer you, Sir, to a far greater blot on the Bill than the one you mention? It is the recent refusal to bring matters of medical dispute to the High Court Judges and to substitute the Minister of Health himself for the final word. This clause was not in the original Bill, but is added as an afterthought, for the very obvious reason that Mr. Bevan, anticipating dissent from doctors, wants to have the whip in his own hand from the start. Are not High Court Judges capable of administering the law impartially? Are not even Nazi war criminals allowed a fair judicial trial? Do you honestly believe, S:r, that doctors need the ethics of Nazi Germany to make them work?
I can assure you, Sir, that this flagrant piece of imported dictatorship is causing increasing hostility among doctors, and among doctors who hitherto have been in favour of a national medical service. In conclusion, therefore, I must ask you to think seriously before assuming that on such a basis of injustice the Health Bill will benefit the health of the country. Should this injustice really eventually be perpetrated, and should it pass unnoticed even by journals of the standing of your own, then one can only deplore that the sea, which kept German tanks out of England in 1940, cannot equally preserve us from the ethics of National Socialism.—I
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