THE PANEL SYSTEM [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—There
is little real conflict between Mrs. Green's state- ments and those in my article. The difference is in the con- clusions we have drawn from our respective experienees. do not agree that Mrs. Green's opinion of the working of the Health Insurance System is " a first-hand one." I wrote from the point of view of a doctor, and of the patients with whom a doctor conies into intimate contact ; Mrs. Green writes as a member of an administrative body, seeing nothing of what is not brought to official notice. She speaks of the " reported cases of under-attention " ; it is the unreported eases that constitute the overwhelming majority. The long- sufferingness of working-people is almost unimaginable ; it is not in their tradition to take " official action " when they feel themselves neglected. But it was not the devotion of the majority of panel doctors, or the sloth and callousne-Ss of the minority, that furnished the text of my article ; not was it the honesty of the &igen of the Health Insuranee Act that I arraigned. It was the incompleteness and leakiness of the Health Insurance System, as it is actually applied, regarded as a national scheine for the maintenance Of the health of the people, to which I endeavoured to draw' atten- tion. As I said in my article, most of the defects in the panel system could be easily remedied. The basic structure is sound ; but the building has never been completed and half the tiles are missing.—I am, Sir, &c.,
63 Hanford Street, E. 1. HARRY ROBERTS.
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