A B.M.A. Commentary
The statement which the British Medical Association has issued on the respective rights of doctors and patients puts the general position accurately and fairly. It is prompted by allegations made by Miss Alice Bacon in the House of Commons, citing a number of cases in which doctors had arbitrarily refused to take would-be patients on their register. In regard to that, it is perfectly true, as the B.M.A. affirms, that it would be as wrong to force a doctor to accept a particular patient as it would be to force a patient to accept a particular doctor. Broadly speaking, a doctor does in fact accept, and up to a maximum number has reason to welcome, patients who desire to register with him. Nevertheless, a good many cases have come to light of doctors who have declined patients with bad health records, because they would be likely to need considerable attention, and others on the ground that their financial position was such that they could well afford to be treated as private patients. This last argument cuts clean across the fundamental principle of the National Health Service Act, that any medical treatment necessary shall be available to the whole population equally, without direct payment by any patient; to which there is the obvious corollary that there must be equal treatment for all, and that the well-to-do can no longer expect various forms of consideration to which they were accustomed as piivate patients. That, as the B.M.A. points out, they can still have if they want it, on the old terms, but the statement does not make it as clear as it might that once a patient has registered with a doctor he cannot be treated as a private patient by that doctor ; for what he wants he must go elsewhere. In all these matters slight frictions are bound to arise, most of which will cure themselves as the Act is worked and reasonable doctors and reasonable patients make the necessary adjustments in a reasonable spirit.
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