DOCTORS AND BUREAUCRATS
SIR,—As a doctor engaged for over fifty years in active general practice, I should like to support Dr. Clarke's admirable letter in The Spectator for June 23rd. Until our premises were entirely demolished by enemy action, I and my partners, with dentist, midwives and nurses, conducted what was, I believe, about the biggest industrial practice in this country ; and I don't think that many of our patients would wish or would have wished us to be replaced by the most carefully selected bureaucratic medical service. The Health Insurance system, with those improvements and modifications which doctors themselves have proposed, seems to me to be the best practicable solution. Of course, there are good doctors, and bad doctors ; good panel doctors and bad panel doctors, and the best persons to penalise the bad ones are those who suffer by them—their patients. The better educated the working public the keener will be their insistence on really good service. The intimacies of the private consulting-room are real intimacies, which doctors arc pledged by oath
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